Latest from the Commodore64. Usual caveats with the numbers and I don’t factor in tie-games as a possibility into the calculations. Apologies to the vocal group that doesn’t like some of my 3-letter abbreviations.
- PHI, SFF, DET, DAL, MIN could all lose out and still make the playoffs. Other than PHI, the others shouldn’t bank on that as a credible strategy.
- ATL, CAR, TBB, CHI, GBP, NYG, and LAR could mathematically sneak in with 6 wins. NOS, WAS, ARI, and SEA need at least 7 to have any kind of chance.
- If TBB wins out to reach 10 wins they’re in, which is the lowest “assured” number of any team. C64 says ATL, NOS, and MIN need 11 wins to avoid any chance of being left out. DET, DAL, PHI, SFF, and SEA look like they need 12.
- CAR, CHI, GBP, NYG, WAS, LAR, and ARI do not control their own destiny.
- The “reasonable” win number that has decent chances of making the playoffs is 9, although 8 is waiting in the shadows to takeover the most likely status.
- Computer projections for wins likely to be good enough to take the divisions (i.e. roughly 2nd place + 1W or winning tiebreaker) are: NFC East 13 wins, North 10 wins, South 8-9 wins, West 10-11 wins.
- Looks like the Eagles clinch a spot this week with a win and a Rams loss. I penciled it out since that seemed weird that a Rams loss would matter as PHI beat them earlier and it looks like without the Rams losing, the possibilitiy would remain of a multi-team tie for all the wildcard spots occuring with the Rams winning the multi-team tiebreaker before h2h with the Eagles became relevant. At least that’s the answer I’m going with because my head now hurts after trying to pencil it out.
- Panthers and Cardinals eliminated from contention with losses.
- My subjective analysis says get to 10 wins to be safe with 8 wins having at least moderate hope. Using that criteria, I have PHI (duh), SFF, DET, and DAL being “realistically in” as they could play Chargers football and still get there, and I have CAR, ARI, CHI, WAS, NYG as being “realistically out” as even 8 wins is either impossible for some or a tall order for the rest.
- For the teams in the middle of the fight, as in not on my realistically in or out lists above, there are four intra-conference games this week (SEA v DAL, DET v NOS, CAR v TBB, SFF v PHI), and the following outcomes would be the most beneficial to the non-combatant contenders as shown: Everyone better off with a DAL win over SEA; Everyone better off with a CAR win over TBB; LAR & SEA better off with a NOS win over DET, everyone else better off with a DET win; Computer says ATL better off with a SFF win over PHI and everyone else better off with a PHI win. I wasn’t going to argue with the C64 on why that is for ATL.
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How do those teams not control their destiny? Is there really a scenario where Green Bay is 11-6 and misses the playoffs lol
I think, and don’t quote me because the computer runs 67 million scenarios so I can’t pencil out each one to find it, but I think if the Rams win the NFC West (which the Packers beat) then there could theorectically be a party at 11-6 that the Packers could lose the tiebreaker on. I think (same caveat) that is the only way an 11-6 Packers team could miss out, if the Rams win the West.
But, realistically, an 11-6 Packers team would go to the playoffs.
The Falcons want SF to win to keep their hopes of the one seed alive obv
So you’re telling me all Detroit needs to do to likely host a playoff game for the first time in 32 years is win 2 out of the next 6 games? (using computer models)
There’s no way the Lions could fuck this up right?!
Right…?
not saying we will do this, but if we beat the Saints, Bears, and Broncos over the next three weeks, and the Vikings drop one of their games to either the Raiders or Bengals, we can clinch the division without ever playing them
Well, I’m calling them realistically in, so there’s that. I won’t mention that I also drafted Daniel Jones and Kenny Pickett as my QB in most of my ff leagues to not discredit my word. Wait, I wasn’t mentioning that.
Oof
I love your posts and am always looking forward to them after the weekend.
13 wins for NFC East is wild. If the cowboys win the rematch against the eagles its possible that 13 isnt even enough.
As fun as that would be, no chance Dallas gets to 13 wins. I think 10-11 is more than likely
You think you’re going to go 2-4 or 3-3 down the stretch?
Thank you very much for the kind words, mucho appreciated.
Yeah, I almost want to do some internet searching to see what’s the highest win totals for top two teams in a division, imagine if the Cowboys hadn’t lost to the lowly Cardinals.
the highest win totals for top two teams in a division
In 1999 the 13-3 Titans finished 2nd to the 14-2 Jags in the AFC Central. The Jags only two losses were to the Titans. The Jags also lost the AFCCG to the Titans, then the Titans ultimately lost the SB at the 1 yard line against the Rams.
The NFC South is trying to do that in reverse…
I like these posts, good work.
I was gonna bitch about your three letter abbreviations, but then I noticed that you already apologized for it in the main post.
Which makes it even more egregious that you recognize they are bad but you still continue to use them. Bro “SFF” when San Francisco literally only has one F in it? What is your justification for that?
Short answer on SFF: San Francisco Forty Niners. Their actual name. https://www.pictorem.com/452859/1972%20San%20Francisco%20Forty%20Niners%20Art.html
Long answer on the 3-letters: Some of the data sources out there as well as some of the sports outlets use these 3-letter abbreviations, so I roll with it primarily because the Commodore64 reports are in sorta-table format, and to have some rows with the team name being two letters and others three letters kinda throws off the flow of reading it.
If there was one thing that my crappy analysis and lame videos/podcasts that I do on all this was going to elicit the most heated response for, I did not forsee this being it. But thus is life.
CAR, CHI, GBP, NYG, WAS, LAR, and ARI do not control their own destiny.
Uh, I know I’m biased, but I’ve been playing around with the playoff machine and I haven’t found a scenario where the Packers don’t make the playoffs if they win out. So how do the Packers not control their own destiny?
Yeah, it’s a tricky one that isn’t likely.