5 NFL non-playoff teams that can make a run at Super Bowl 55

1. Pittsburgh Steelers

There is, without question, no better candidate for a massive turnaround in the 2020 NFL season than the Pittsburgh Steelers. They played the majority of the season without Ben Roethlisberger and rolled out an ill-fated rotation of Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges. The results were downright terrible as the offense was ranked dead last in the league by Football Outsiders’ Offensive DVOA, which measures efficiency.

Because of how bad Rudolph and Hodges were, though, the weapons throughout the offense certainly took a big hit. James Conner looked like a shell of the player he was the previous season while JuJu Smith-Schuster could not build off a breakout 2018 campaign. Getting Roethlisberger back in 2020 should alleviate that, especially if they can land some more weaponry in free agency or the draft.

What really bodes well for the Steelers, though, is the improvements that they made on defense. With T.J. Watt enjoying a breakout season, rookie Devin Bush improving the linebacker corps and the midseason trade for Minkah Fitzpatrick took a unit that was often maligned by analysts throughout the league and made them one of the best defenses in the league, ranking third in Defensive DVOA.

Though they do need to improve the offense around Big Ben and make sure to maintain their defensive prowess, what the Steelers showed by going 8-8 with horrendous quarterback play makes them a highly likely contender to go from out of the NFL Playoffs to being very much in the Super Bowl conversation.