I watched four good but incomplete teams play for a berth in the Super Bowl on Sunday. I was unimpressed.

I saw a New England team struggle for 50 minutes, barely escaping with an AFC Championship Game victory against a Jacksonville Jaguars team that was a competent quarterback and a trusting coaching staff away from going to their first Super Bowl.

Then I watched two backup quarterbacks battle for the NFC Championship, with Nick Foles tearing up one of the NFL's best defenses, getting the better of the Case Keenum-led Vikings.

Somehow, someway, is the best the NFL has to offer.

And all I could think about is how encouraging that fact should be to fans of the Raiders and 49ers.

Both Bay Area NFL teams finished with 6-10 records in 2017 and will draft early in April, so the Super Bowl might seem a world away, but watching Sunday, I didn't see anything that the Raiders or 49ers couldn't handle if things go right for both teams this offseason.

The Patriots might appear to be on a dynastic run, but they sure looked beatable on Sunday.

Thinking out loud here: How much of their success is their greatness is their doing, and how much of it is the incompetence – sorry, the politically correct term is parity – of the rest of the league?

Either way, the Patriots have never been an inevitability and they look like even less of one these days.

The other three teams in the NFL's final four weren't exactly juggernauts, either.

The NFL has championed parity for decades, and I'd posit that the league's parity has never been greater than it is right now.

That opens the door to both Bay Area NFL teams.

After all, I saw the 49ers beat the Jaguars, decisively, in December and I saw the Raiders' defense make Foles look like – well, Nick Foles – when they played the Eagles. (There were other problems in that game – a Raiders loss – but the point stands.)

So forgive me if I was a bit confused when I saw the Jaguars nearly win the AFC title and Foles put up 31 unanswered points and a 141.4 quarterback rating against the vaunted Vikings defense on Sunday.

This weekend proved that the formula for success in today's NFL is to have a great quarterback or a great team. Few – if any – teams have both.

But the Niners and Raiders could have both in 2018 and beyond.

That's not a flippant bit of offseason optimism – it's a serious statement.

Think about it: The 49ers – who looked poised to win one or two games in 2017 – went 5-0 in December, beating three playoff teams, once Jimmy Garoppolo was installed as a starting quarterback. Garoppolo lifted up one of the worst rosters in the NFL, proving himself to be a transcendent quarterback in the process. In this league, with the current state of quarterback play, that alone seems good enough to make the 49ers playoff contenders in 2018.

But the 49ers also have excellent coaching, a ton of money to spend, and a lot of draft capital to allocate to giving Garoppolo more protection and firepower and to bolster a defense that has some excellent building blocks already in place.

This is a team that can be in the mix.

(And for those who believe a second-year downturn is coming for Jimmy G, I have to ask: What are defenses going to do to elicit that failure? Make the windows he was throwing into even tighter? Can they find a way to make his offensive line worse? Get real.)

I'm even more bullish on the Raiders' chances in 2018.

Remember when the Raiders entered 2017 as Super Bowl contenders? Yes, it seems as if a decade has passed, but that hype didn't exist because the Raiders won a contest.

Now the Raiders were, without question, the most disappointing team in the AFC this past season, but those Super Bowl expectations weren't totally unfounded and this roster isn't automatically bad because they failed to live up to expectations in 2017.

And with new head coach Jon Gruden in charge, the Raiders could be poised to bounce back in a big way in 2018. I'd buy low, but the price of stock is too high, as the Raiders try to recoup some of the costs of the Gruden contract.

Still, Derek Carr was an MVP candidate two years ago – and while I'm skeptical about his ability to be a reliable quarterback, that's not to say his success was a complete fluke – he has as much talent as any quarterback in the league and there are plenty of reasons to believe in a Carr-Gruden marriage.

Now, we'll have to see how Gruden adapts in his return to the sideline, but thinking optimistically, it doesn't take much mental strain to imagine this Raiders' offense as one of the NFL's best next year.

And while Oakland had a horrendous defense last year, despite Khalil Mack's near-superhuman weekly efforts, it's not beyond salvage. The Raiders finally have a consistent scheme in place (and a worthwhile defensive coordinator), so if the Raiders' new front-office braintrust of Gruden and general manager Reggie McKenzie spend their first offseason together making a concerted effort to bolster the unit around Mack, Oakland can at least be competent on that side of the ball.

Add it up: A top-five offense with a league-average (or better) defense – in today's NFL that's a Super Bowl contender, and that status is well within reach for the Raiders in 2018.

After all, Brady isn't going to remain immortal forever – Blake Bortles nearly beat him Sunday. And wouldn't it be poetic if Gruden's Raiders, who still believe they were jobbed in the "Tuck Rule Game" in the 2001 playoffs, which helped Brady and the Patriots advance en route to their first Super Bowl title, sparking this dynasty, ended that run?

It's going to take some work, and the 49ers and Raiders are just two of 32 teams that are all looking to improve (well, make that 31 – we all know how this goes for the Browns), and while the road to contention is crowded, it has never been so well paved and frankly, you don't need to reach top speed to pull away from the pack.

This is doable.

So, whatcha say, Niners and Raiders fans? See you at the stadium next January?