Oakland Raiders the pick for Super Bowl XLII

This is the time of the year we all make predictions on what is going to happen during the NFL season, and for many seasons now, it basically has been an exercise that revolves around a single question:

Can anybody beat the Patriots?

In a league that prides itself on parity, that has rules aimed at preventing a dynasty, no one has figured out a way yet to keep the Patriots out of the chase for the Super Bowl.

Since Tom Brady became New England's starting quarterback in 2001, the Patriots have failed to qualify for the playoffs exactly twice. Once, in Brady's second season as starter. The other time when he missed virtually the entire season in 2008 due to injury. Discount the injury year, and Brady has led the Patriots into the playoffs 13 years in a row.

He'll probably do it again this year.

But as occasionally happens, the Patriots will not win the Super Bowl. At least, that's the view from here. The pick is the Oakland Raiders, who have a history of winning the Lombardi Trophy while they are busily packing up the moving trucks. That's what happened in 1980, when the late Al Davis announced before the season he was moving the team from Oakland to Los Angeles, and the Raiders responded by winning the Super Bowl - as a wild-card.

This time, the Raiders are preparing to move from Oakland to Las Vegas, scheduled for the 2019 or 2020 season but like 1980, they're playing in Oakland as a lame duck.

Of course, it's more than that history of dealing with geographical issues that makes it possible for the Raiders to win again. They have one of the NFL's best young quarterbacks, Derek Carr, heading into his prime. He improved his completion percentage, his average gain per pass and his touchdown-interception ratio from his first year in 2014 to his second in 2015 and again to his third in 2016. It has been a straight upward trajectory.

The Raiders have surrounded him with receivers, good protection, and despite some questions about their defense, particularly pass coverage, they are still solid there led by a monster, Khalil Mack, who had 26 sacks the last two seasons. Their special teams are typically good. And now they have added a difference-maker at running back, luring Marshawn Lynch out of retirement to play for his soon-to-be-no-longer hometown team.

We know Lynch is a strange bird. Keeps his own counsel. Hard to know what's on his mind, or why he retired from the Seattle Seahawks at age 29, now coming back at 31. Maybe he never got over that Russell Wilson interception at the goal line that cost him a chance at back-to-back Super Bowl victories. We don't know because he won't say and, of course, it is a projection to assume he'll return and play the way he used to play. But he has shed a few pounds, he's healthy and, it appears, he's happy. And, just like in Seattle, he has a terrific team around him.

New England, as usual, figures to have an easier path to the post-season than the Raiders, because only the Miami Dolphins are a realistic challenger in the AFC East. But the Raiders' division, the AFC West, is not as strong as it has been some years. Denver is still unsettled at quarterback, the Chargers are in transition in their first season in L.A., and Kansas City has a quarterback, Alex Smith, who has to look over his shoulder at a first-round draft choice.

Interestingly, the Raiders will play the Patriots during the regular season but in a bizarre bit of NFL scheduling, their November 19 game, a Raiders' home game, will be played in Mexico City. Why the league chose to take what looks to be one of the season's marquee games out of the country is something of a mystery, although we know the league thinks its TV audience is more important than the live fans, anyway. Even if it claims the opposite.

The NFC, meanwhile, appears to have more potential contenders than the AFC because there is no long-established power in that conference. Seattle is in a bit of a decline, Arizona is a mystery, the East is a tossup despite Dallas' resurgence last year, and the North features a Green Bay team that can't get over the final hurdle despite the play of the NFL's second-best quarterback, Aaron Rodgers.

It's the South that's the really interesting division in the NFC, with Tampa Bay on the rise behind Jameis Winston, Atlanta trying to rebound from that crushing Super Bowl defeat, Carolina a year removed from its own Super Bowl misery and New Orleans trying for a last gasp with Drew Brees.

The Saints have added Adrian Peterson to their backfield, but Peterson essentially has played only one of the last three years and he's now 32, even older than Lynch. Maybe a change of scenery will revive him. Maybe the opener against the Vikings will. Maybe the thought of a Super Bowl in Minneapolis can do it for him. But if he can give Brees good support, that could make the Saints a real threat again after three consecutive 7-9 seasons.

Let the fun begin.

Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than five decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.