Every team before every season in every sport believes they are a potential contender that year to make the postseason. It's the fun of a blank slate and the hope of yet another year of expectations. But it's also rather silly for some fan bases to believe their teams should hold playoff hopes when the team is clearly so much worse than everyone else. Enter the Oakland Raiders whose quarterback, Carson Palmer, recently said the team is a playoff-caliber team.
"I think we're a playoff team," Palmer said recently. "We've got a lot of work to do, but we've been at it in OTAs and minicamps and now training camp's around the corner. Guys have been studying hard and working on the new system. And it's ‘go' time. There is no cushion or a year to get kind of momentum going. We're ready to come in to camp and go out and win as many games as we can."
In a division that features a San Diego Chargers team that's reloading, a healthy Kansas City Chiefs team that won the division in 2010 and the returning champs in the Denver Broncos -- who added Peyton Manning -- the battle to be competitive for the Raiders will be uphill all season.