The New England Patriots and Chicago Bears were just playing out the string late in lost seasons when the calendar flipped to December last year.

Now they find themselves at the top of the NFL standings after remarkable turnarounds.

It's been more than three decades since the two teams that earned the top playoff seeds in each conference had missed the postseason the previous year.

That last happened in 1992, when Pittsburgh topped the AFC and San Francisco earned the No. 1 seed in the NFC after missing the 1991 playoffs despite a 10-win season. The only other times it occurred since seeding began in 1975 came in the nine-game strike season of 1982 with Washington and the Los Angeles Raiders, and in 1981 with San Francisco and Cincinnati.

Making this even more unusual is the fact t

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