NFL mock season: Submit your picks now!

The NFL regular season starts next week! We’re almost there! Sigh, we know -- it’s still too long to wait.

So let’s have our own mock season to help pass the time over the next eight days. By the time the actual season starts, we’ll already have determined the Super Bowl champion.

It will be fun! For the rest of this week, we’ll be accepting your predictions for the four division winners and two wild-card teams in each conference.

Then we’ll tally up the points (division winners will get two points per vote, wild cards one) to determine the 12 playoff teams -- the eight teams with most points in each division, plus the two teams with the next-most points in each conference.

Next week, you will get to vote on the winners of all the playoff games, starting with the wild-card round on Sunday and continuing each day until we crown a mock Super Bowl champion just before the real season kicks off Wednesday evening.

So let’s get started. Pick the division winners and two wild-card teams in the AFC:

North -- Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns;

South – Indianapolis Colts, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans;

East – New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, New York Jets;

West -- Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, Kansas City Chiefs.

And then pick the division winners and two wild-card teams in the NFC:

North – Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings, Detroit Lions;

South – New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers;

East – New York Giants, Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins;

West – San Francisco 49ers, St. Louis Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Arizona Cardinals.

Submit your picks either in the comment section of this post or in an email to charles.schilken@latimes.com by 3 p.m. PST Saturday (write “mock season” in the subject window). Then we’ll see you Sunday for the start of the playoffs!

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