Identifying Every Super Bowl Contender's Fatal Flaw

Heading into Week 11, the playoff race is starting to shake out in the NFL. Right now, the top of the league is fairly set with six teams with a win percentage of .700 or higher.

Those teams are the Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots, Oakland Raiders, Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks, the franchises you will consistently hear about as championship contenders in the coming weeks. In mid-November, it's hard to find an analyst who is claiming that a team like the Houston Texans, New York Giants or Washington Redskins, who have the next-best win percentages in the NFL, are among the elite.

At the same time, though, there are plenty of speed bumps built into every NFL roster. No team is without a blemish, looking unbeatable through two-and-a-half months of play.

Football Outsiders even went as far as to claim that the 5-4 Philadelphia Eagles have had the best season of any squad in the league. This concept of the cream rising, and the cream also being composed of volatile teams that can lose on any given weekend, will make for an interesting playoff race.

Join us as we cover why every one of these "elite" teams may wind up on the wrong side of any postseason game they play this season.

Seattle Seahawks: Offensive Line Play

Butch Dill/Associated Press

On the surface, you wouldn't be able to tell that the Seahawks have an offensive line problem. They have only allowed 19 sacks this year, good enough to place them in the top 10 in the NFL, and they've only thrown three interceptions.

When you dig a bit deeper, though, you realize why those numbers are so. First, a lot of Seattle's passes have been shortened up, which turns offensive linemen into quick-setting or cut-blocking machines in pass protection.

That's a fine plan of attack as long as you're able to stay on pace for an entire drive, but when the playoffs start, there are going to be times when you will need to be a quick-strike offense. It's also going to be harder to stay on pace against better defenses, and the Seahawks' 3.5 yards-per-carry average, the third-worst in the NFL, could keep them from falling behind the chains.

We've now convinced ourselves that Seattle and the Cowboys are the top contenders in the NFC—not because they are actually Super Bowl-caliber teams relative to recent history, but because they are all we have to choose from in the conference.

In 2012, during quarterback Russell Wilson's rookie year, the Seahawks beat six teams by multiple scores, setting the tone for what we expect from Pete Carroll's Seattle team with Wilson at the helm.

In 2013, they won eight games by multiple scores. In 2014, they won nine, and in 2015, they won eight again.

This year, the Seahawks we've been praising have won just two games by multiple scores, and they have come against the 1-8 San Francisco 49ers and the 3-7 New York Jets. This team is a mirage of what we've thought Seattle to be over the last half-decade, and it's because its offensive line restricts what it can do offensively.

There's a reason why Seattle's running game can't find itself. There's a reason why the Seahawks are on pace to throw fewer touchdowns than they ever have in the Wilson era. There's a reason why Wilson didn't score a touchdown over a month-long stretch.

Much like we've seen with the Minnesota Vikings' recent stumble from a 5-0 record to a 5-4 slump, if some team presses the Seahawks offensive line for 60 minutes, it has a path to beating them in any individual game.

Kansas City Chiefs: Alex Smith

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Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith has two playoff wins in his 11-year career as an NFL quarterback, which started with him being drafted first overall by the 49ers. At the end of the day, that's still a major red flag.

The Chiefs' way of striking NFL defenses with a chippy plan of attack works, but only if they are able to stay on schedule. If they see backups in key roles, like they did in a stolen victory against the Jacksonville Jaguars this year, it's going to be tough for them to win a playoff game.

In 3rd-and-long situations, everyone in the stadium knows that Kansas City is going to run some sort of a screen play. In a highly competitive AFC West, the Chiefs could play themselves into a non-ideal situation.

You can make the case that the second-best or third-best record in the AFC could still land Kansas City a wild-card slot, one that makes their path to the Super Bowl three games long, which could all be on the road. Smith playing on the road, with the defense knowing exactly what the Chiefs' plan of attack is, is the opposite of what you want to align yourself with, no matter how many regular-season wins the team can post.

Here are some of the quarterbacks with a better yards-per-attempt mark than Smith this season: Derek Anderson, Charlie Whitehurst, Jay Cutler, Nick Foles, Jacoby Brissett, Robert Griffin III, Shaun Hill, Brian Hoyer, Colin Kaepernick, Cody Kessler, Trevor Siemian, Case Keenum, Josh McCown and Mike Glennon. He has the same yards per attempt as Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Of those 15 quarterbacks, only five of them have a higher completion percentage than Smith. To say the least, Smith's issues with looking over open receivers in the deeper portion of the field are still present.

Foles' 135.2 passer rating game against the Indianapolis Colts, when he subbed in for an injured Smith, is a better result in that weighted statistic than Smith has had in his last 36 regular-season games.

Taking what defenses give you is a great idea, but in the NFL playoffs, when the stronger defenses advance, those freebies are few and far between. On third down, the Chiefs are 29th in the league in terms of conversion rate, which shouldn't surprise a soul.

Denver Broncos: Offense

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When Peyton Manning retired from football after the Super Bowl last season, everyone thought that the Broncos were going to improve offensively. Manning, who threw for nine touchdowns and 17 interceptions in his last year in the league, was thought of as the main component holding back general manager John Elway's team.

After flirting with the idea of trading for Kaepernick, the Broncos decided to roll into 2016 with three major contenders at quarterback: Mark Sanchez, whom they traded for and later released before the regular season began; Paxton Lynch, their first-round rookie; and Siemian, a second-year Day 3 selection.

Siemian wound up winning the quarterback battle in the preseason, but you'll never guess what the result was. An inexperienced, young passer who wasn't thought of much coming out of college in fact is not a good quarterback.

According to Football Outsiders' DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) metric, Denver finished 25th in the league last year in passing offense. Right now, its passing offense ranks 28th for the season.

It's not just the Broncos' passing offense regressing, though. Last year, they were 20th in the league in rushing offense; this year, they are 26th.

In pass defense, they dropped from first to second in the league, which means little, but their drop from the fourth-best run defense to 23rd in the NFL is telling. This team coasted off strong talent at every position but quarterback last year, and it has regressed across the board, with its offense again proving to be an Achilles' heel.

Here is a list of quarterbacks with as many or more interceptions and as many or fewer touchdowns as Siemian, with the qualifier being that a passer has only missed one game this year:

• Ryan Fitzpatrick, New York Jets
• Case Keenum, Los Angeles Rams
• Joe Flacco, Baltimore Ravens
• Brock Osweiler, Houston Texans
• Carson Palmer, Arizona Cardinals
• Ryan Tannehill, Miami Dolphins

If you were to make a list of disappointing passers, that's about as close as you're going to get.

Fitzpatrick was a last-minute savior when he signed with the Jets. Keenum had a first-round tender placed on him this offseason. Flacco has yet to live up to his massive contract post-Super Bowl. Osweiler already looks like one of the biggest free-agency busts in recent memory. Palmer has massively regressed this year. Tannehill has yet to reach his potential as a first-round passer.

If the season ended today, only Flacco and Osweiler would be in the playoffs, winning two of the three divisions with one team that has fewer than five losses on the year. The Siemian Broncos, on the offensive side of the ball, are playing more like a highly combustible wild-card participant than a true playoff contender.

Oakland Raiders: Defense

Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated Press

According to Football Outsiders' DVOA metric, the Raiders have the 28th-ranked defense in the NFL. Right now, the Raiders have seven wins, the same amount as two other AFC West rivals, the Chiefs and Broncos.

Only one non-divisional leader in the AFC has a record over .500 in the conference right now—the Miami Dolphins in the AFC East—so the threat of the Raiders not making the playoffs is slim. However, a single win by the end of the regular season can be the difference between the Raiders having a first-round bye and playing on the road during the Wild Card Round.

That's significant if you believe the age-old saying "defense wins championships," or if you believe that defenses travel better than offenses in the playoffs. That's significant if you think the Chiefs and Broncos, who have top-10 defenses, per DVOA, will make up the lead that Oakland has built down the road.

Only the Atlanta Falcons have allowed more points for a team over .500 heading into Week 11 of the season, and yet somehow the Raiders have five more wins than losses at the moment. Oakland's point differential of just plus-22 over the course of the year is by far the worst of any team with just two losses right now.

The Raiders are 5-1 in games decided by just one score. That means a play like a single pick-six, one wrong bounce on either side of ball, could have swung five of Oakland's seven wins. That's not a sustainable rate for any team to keep up over 16 games.

To go even further, four of those five wins came in games in which the Raiders were ahead by three points or fewer at the end of regulation. The Raiders are getting out of games by the skin of their teeth, which is great for their playoff chances but wouldn't suggest much staying power once the playoffs kick off.

New England Patriots: Pass-Rush Productivity

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The Patriots have a 7-2 record, good for the second-best mark in the NFL, but their ability to get after the quarterback is well below average. Defensively, the most important parts of 2016 NFL football are forcing sacks and interceptions, which both kill drives on arrival.

In terms of sacks, the Patriots are tied for 29th in the league with just 16. Their top sack artist at the moment is Trey Flowers, a second-year Day 3 selection from Arkansas.

He has four sacks on the year, with all of them coming in the last two weeks. League-wide, 57 players have at least 3.5 sacks. Of the top 89 players ranked by sacks alone, New England just has two, with Jabaal Sheard being the other.

To put that into perspective, the Washington Redskins, Seahawks and Tennessee Titans all have two pass-rushers who rank in the top 15 in terms of sacks. Seattle's pair of Cliff Avril and Frank Clark, who is only starting because the Seahawks lost defensive end Michael Bennett due to a knee injury, have 16.5 sacks combined, more than the entire Patriots roster has had all season.

Protecting a lead late in games could become a problem for the Patriots if they can't turn up the heat on opposing quarterbacks. It's possible that Flowers is going to step up tremendously in the second half of this season, but there's a better chance that the young, non-top-100 pick is more likely a flash in the pan than anything else.

The trade of linebacker Jamie Collins, who often stunted inside on off-the-ball blitzes, also doesn't help the Patriots in the short term. This is the biggest hurdle that New England will face on the road to a potential Super Bowl victory, which, surprisingly, would be just its second since the 2004 season.

Dallas Cowboys: Battle-Tested Experience

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There may not be a team on this list with an easier flaw to explain than the Cowboys. Whatever you want to say about four-time Pro Bowl quarterback Tony Romo, he still has the experience of playing in and leading the Cowboys through nationally televised games.

This Dallas team has only played in two nationally televised games under rookie quarterback Dak Prescott. The first was a 31-17 win over the now-2-7 Chicago Bears. The second was a 29-23 overtime win over the 5-4 Eagles. Both were home victories.

We'll know more about the Cowboys' ability to play in the limelight at the end of the year—they make a road trip to Minnesota for Thursday Night Football, and they host the final Monday Night Football game of the season against the Detroit Lions.

According to Football Outsiders' DVOA metric, Dallas has the second-best offense in the league. With that being said, Prescott and first-round rookie running back Ezekiel Elliott account for touching the ball 509 times out of the Cowboys' 585 offensive snaps this year, per NFL.com's statistics.

You simply can't believe that Romo is a "regular-season" quarterback while assuming that an offense led by two rookies has no chance of faltering when the lights are the brightest. The team also has the 19th-ranked defense, per DVOA.

Under defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, Dallas has just one playoff win under its belt, a 24-20 victory over the Lions that included a 17-0 run to end the game after the team was down 20-7 with just a couple of minutes left in the third quarter. The Cowboys may be the team to beat in the NFC, but be cautiously optimistic about a group that has never made a run together before.