We are deep into the football playoffs with only four teams now having a shot at winning the Super Bowl.  This has been an interesting, yet unpredictable season.  I don’t even think Nostradamus could have predicted the end of the 2008 season.

But in all of the craziness there were a handful of pleasant surprises that nobody saw coming.

Hit the jump to see the biggest shocks of the season and pick which one you think is the cream of the crop.

Two feel-good stories have got to be the surprise turn-around of the Atlanta Falcons and the Miami Dolphins.

Saying that Atlanta was in turmoil in 2007 was the understatement of the year.  Their franchise QB was in legal litigation over dog-fighting charges, the head coach of the team — Bobby Petrino — just up and quit on the team, and the Falcons were, well, pretty terrible on the field.

Needless to say in 2008, everybody was picking the Atlanta Falcons to finish in the cellar of the NFC South division.  However, after making a few key free agent acquisitions, namely Michael Turner, and picking up Boston College’s Matt Ryan in the NFL Draft, the Falcons were able to turn things around as they went 11-5 and clinched a Wild Card spot in this year’s playoffs.

The Miami Dolphins were just plain putrid in 2007, threatening to be the first team to go 0-16.  However, Bill Parcells, a new coach and the signing of Chad Pennington really ignited this team.  Much like the Falcons, the Dolphins were picked to do absolutely nothing in their division behind the Patriots, Jets and Bills.  Pennington and Co. had plenty to say to the doubters as they finished the regular season at 11-5 with a AFC East division crown — over the likes of the Patriots, Jets and Bills — to go along with it.

Yet another surprise this season was the impact that the NFL rookies made on the league.  Ten years from now, we could look back at the 2008 draft class and say that it was one of the best.

So just how good were they this year?  Well, three of the league’s top eight rushers were rookies: Steve Slaton, Matt Forte and Chris Johnson.  Not too shabby considering that Forte was the only rookie in a true one-back system of the three.

Also, rookie wide receivers Eddie Royal and DeSean Jackson made huge impacts for their respective teams.  And lastly, rookie QBs Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco both led their teams to playoff berths.  And Flacco has the Ravens only one game away from the Super Bowl.

Finally, how about those Detroit Lions?  Sure we knew they were going to suck, but 0-16?!  A feat that no other team had accomplished in the modern NFL, ever.

Surely, they should have gotten lucky and snuck past at least one team.  After all, these men are all professional athletes.  Any given Sunday right?  WRONG!!!!  The Lions stunk it up in ‘08, and they stunk it up bad.  Whenever you have to bring Daunte Culpepper out of retirement to instantly become the starting QB, you know you are going to have problems.

But then again, maybe this is all just a ploy.  They could be positioning themselves to take home the biggest suprise of 2009 when they run the table and win the Super Bowl next year. Stranger things have happened, right?

What was the biggest surprise of 2008?

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