If they were lucky then they would not have gotten through the playoffs to the superbowl. The NFC was not as good as it is this year but the playoff teams normally weed out any team not good enough to be in the superbowl.
I remember watching the San Deigo the first game of the season and thinking that our Defense was looking great. We had every starter on the field. Mike Brown was laying wood all over the place. The Dline looked very strong. The next week without Brown and Dusty the D looked a lot different. Then Vasher goes out and it started looking worse. Nagging injuries to Harris and Urlacher have slowed the D's performance, along with more and more injuries. I believe that if our D had not gone through all of these injuries our record would be a lot better. I cant think of which game but i recall at one point in the season we had our whole secondary out with injuries. I dont care how u look at it our D has been weakened by injuries. Take for example the last Vikings game with a injured Dline and the right defensive scheme we shut down AP, we forced them to go to the air and with Vasher back we forced turnovers and should have won that game.
As for the Offense there is not much we can do with no running game. Unless you have a Brady or Manning at QB you are not going to win without a run game(not sure how much help either QB would have been with our oline). So we dont have a top tier QB, that tells me we better have a hell of a running game. The running game starts up front with the Oline which is IMO is the weakest link to this football team. I dont care if we had LT AP LJ no one could run behind this line that we have. I take that back Barry Sanders could have but he is the only RB to do so year in and year out in Detroit behind weak olines. I cant count how many times i saw Benson getting hit in the backfield right after taking the handoff.
I am a firm believer that if the OLINE is fixed we can contend for the NFC next year. I would be willing to bet that if Benson had a good oline to run behind he could prove that he is not a bust. The biggest changes need for next year are up front with the oline. I hope we can lure Faneca from Pit and then draft a LT. Putting our staring oline at LT=draft, G=Faneca, C=Kruetz, G= Garza, RT=Tait. I wouldnt mind seeing this oline.