Quote:
Originally Posted by albionmoonlight
Sigh. It has been a while since I've had to look at my team through the "if these 6 things all break the right way, then you can back into the last wildcard" lens.
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The wild card race in the NFC is still wide open though, it's a week or two too early to disregard the Saints (and the Panthers and Falcons).
In the NFC South, the clusterfuck between Carolina, Atlanta and New Orleans means that two of them will miss the playoffs, but if one of them sweeps the other two, that team will have a serious shot at the final wild card.
In the NFC North, Minnesota and Chicago are still in it, but at best only one of them can get there as they will play their head-to-head clashes in weeks 15 and 18.
In the NFC East, at best both Washington and Philadelphia get to 10 wins, because they still play both head-to-head games (weeks 15 and 17). And with Dallas also playing 3 games against those two (weeks 14, 16 and 18), it's kind of a best case scenario for all three to finish 10-7. The Giants aren't technically eliminated yet, but all those aforementioned games means so many wins will have to be distributed, even if the Giants win all of their last 5 games (especially the 3-some in division), they're still unlikely to catch up with second place in the division.
And then there's San Francisco in the NFC West, sitting in the hot seat for now. They will hold of the third and fourth place teams in the NFC South, but one of that threesome will become threat (of those the Falcons have the best shot as they're playing the 49ers in week 15). Same situation versus the Washington and Philadelphia winner and loser. Seattle isn't completely out of the picture, mostly due to their head-to-head sweep of San Francisco, but they're winless in all other NFC games, so it probably means winning all of their last 5 games is the only way to get in.
And that last part is basically how all of these .500 and below teams in the NFC must be feeling. Which at the same time means it's very likely one of them will go on a lukewarm streak and sneak in with a 8-9 record as the #7 seed.
On the AFC side of things, it's even more true that it's too early to draw a clear picture.
