Because the NFL love parity, every year a couple of surprise teams make the jump from the bottom of the heap to the top of the leaderboard.

By Steven Cifuentes

Going into the 2014 season everyone looked at the Arizona Cardinals roster and thought the quarterback was too old and the leading wide receiver had one foot out the door.

So what happens once the season gets under way? Carson Palmer finds the fountain of youth and Arizona goes 11-5 and earns an NFC Wild Card berth. They even thrived when Palmer went down with a season ending injury.

One of the direct results of the NFL salary cap is that any team can rebuild within a couple seasons and become a legitimate contender.

What other league can brag about a streak of 10 straight years for which one or more teams went from last place the year prior to first place the next season? From 2003-2013 the NFL had a total of 16 teams complete the feat of going from the basement to penthouse.

So don’t worry Tampa Bay Buccaneers or New York Jets fans, the stay at the bottom could be short lived with a couple of breaks. Actually Jets fans, on second-thought, stop celebrating for we all know how this story ends.

Let’s take a look at Elite Sports NY’s five surprise NFL teams in 2015:

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Founder of New York Hockey Message board on Facebook. If you want to know one man's opinion of Rangers hockey, great and awful, he is the man to seek out. Steve is a self proclaimed obsessed Rangers Fan. Steven's perfect romantic evening is a Beer, Wings and a Ranger game on TV with his girlfriend. Girlfriend is optional of course.