The Best-Kept Secret on Every NFL Roster Heading into 2021 Season bleacherreport.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bleacherreport.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Eric Gay/Associated Press
Planning in advance is important, so let s go ahead and demand more run for a handful of players next season, shall we?
Plenty of youngsters can fall under this umbrella. The selections that follow are by no means the only candidates. The field of possibilities was narrowed by focusing on those who wrapped their age-22-or-younger seasons who averaged fewer than 20 minutes per game on the year.
Late-season usage increases were taken into account. Players who saw a bunch of extra floor time for a large chunk of the year, like Malachi Flynn and Kira Lewis Jr., were bounced from consideration. Anyone who had their season derailed by injuries, such as Killian Hayes, was given the same treatment.
Even with the NFL's expanded playoff field, not every team can realistically consider itself a title contender. Only a handful of teams are of that caliber, and more than half of the league will still miss the playoffs.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have not
missed the postseason since 2012 and have won three National League pennants and a World Series in that time frame. Conversely, the Seattle Mariners are fighting to avoid missing the playoffs for the 20th consecutive season. What about some of the other franchises yearning for October baseball?
Let s take a look at some of the longest playoff droughts in MLB and when they might end. These timelines were devised through an assessment of current MLB rosters and players under club control, as well as the expected arrival and development of top minor leaguers.
For clarity s sake, no team on this list has made the playoffs since 2016. Easy enough, right? Well, maybe not for the following clubs.
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Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press
The 2020-21 NBA season hasn t gone quite as most would have expected. The Utah Jazz and Philadelphia 76ers lead their respective divisions, while the Brooklyn Nets superteam came together as a legitimate threat with relative ease.
The vaunted and defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, meanwhile, has had their season derailed by injuries. That s a real issue for LeBron James and Co., as there are dangerous teams at the back end of the playoff field that should worry some teams at the top.
Los Angeles is likely headed to the play-in tournament, where best-of series are out the window.