Week 13 Playoff Update: Impact of Chiefs-Packers on Both Conferences

There’s a game that we’ve all been waiting for in Week 13. A game that we’ve been slowly counting the days for; a game that we thought, before the season, might be one of the most impactful in the entire season. A young quarterback, in his first full season starting, going up against a perennial MVP candidate in a championship game rematch. That’s right, we get to watch the Kansas City Chiefs (8-3) trundling up to Lambeau Field to take on the Green Bay Packers (5-6).

…What, you were expecting the NFC Championship rematch? OK, yes, the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles do play each other, and that’s the game of the week for both on-field and off-field reasons. But, from a playoff perspective? It’s actually not all that important. Both teams are making the postseason no matter what happens. The Eagles essentially lock up the #1 seed and home field advantage with a win, putting the 49ers in a battle for #2 with the Lions. If the 49ers win, they’ll be one game back of Philly with the tiebreaker, leaving open the possibility that they catch the Eagles; call that a 30% chance or so.

That’s all very important, but it’s also rather elementary. Chiefs-Packers, on the other hand, affects two very tight races involving multiple teams. While the Chiefs are in control of their fate for the top seed in the AFC at the moment, they have five other teams with seven or more wins nipping at their heels, just waiting for them to slip up. The Packers are the odd ones looking in in the NFC wildcard race, but have won three of their last four games and are looking to make a major move into the postseason in Jordan Love’s first year starting. An upset win over Kansas City might be all it takes to launch them into playoff pole position.

In other words, a Chiefs win brings order, and a Packers win brings chaos to two separate multi-team playoff races. It’s going to have more impact on the playoff race as a whole than 49ers-Eagles or Saints-Lions or any of the other intriguing matches on this week’s docket; this is the one that is most going to shape what we’re watching over the final five weeks of the regular season. Let’s break it down.

Kansas City Chiefs (-6.5) @ Green Bay Packers

All DVOA numbers courtesy of FTN.

Let’s be blunt – an upset, while not impossible, is somewhat unlikely. Despite recent struggles with offensive consistency, the Chiefs are a better football team, top to bottom, than the Packers. There’s a reason the Chiefs are battling for the top seed in their conference, while the Packers are trying to scrounge their way back to a .500 record in theirs. Kansas City is a very good team that’s had a couple hard games in recent weeks; Green Bay is a below average team with aspirations.

Although that’s perhaps not fair to Green Bay. The Packers certainly were a below average team when they were on their four-game losing streak between Week 4 and Week 8. There were a lot of growing pains; a lot of struggles from Jordan Love, more than their fair share of defensive slipups. But since November, Green Bay has turned the page somewhat. They had a legitimately great game in the 20-3 win over the Rams, a complete win where all three phases contributed to a beat down and finally figuring out ways to score points in the first half. They were very good on Thanksgiving, upsetting the Lions behind three touchdown passes from Love against a defense that’s been reeling in recent weeks, and taking advantage of multiple Detroit turnovers to keep the pressure on. The two games in the middle weren’t quite as impressive, but were average performances from a team that was struggling to hit even those heights for most of October. The Packers had an average DVOA of 23.8% in their last four games, which ranks sixth in the league. It’s a small sample size, admittedly, but the Packers have been playing like a very good team for a month.

Over that same four-game stretch, the Chiefs are fifth with an average DVOA of 24.8%, well within any margin of error and the effects of having to travel to the frozen tundra. That’s not even including their loss to Denver four games ago in the Mahomes flu game; they simply haven’t blown the doors off of anyone in a bit. Drops, of course, are the main story. Justin Watson and Marquez Valdes-Scantling both have double-digit drop rates, and Kadarius Toney and Rashee Rice aren’t that far behind.           The receiving corps’ inability to catch cost the Chiefs their game against the Eagles; it’s not crazy to think that sort of weakness will continue to crop up from time to time throughout the rest of their schedule.

Then you can add in little things. The Packers will have the advantage of extra rest, because they played on Thanksgiving while the Chiefs played on Sunday. Then you have the weather, with the night game calling for a 54% chance of snow – not exactly blizzard conditions or anything, but maybe something to slow down the more explosive offense in this one.

So maybe things will be a little bit closer than you might otherwise expect from the statistical profiles of the two teams. And you do have a Packers passing attack that is finally clicking, with Love throwing for 590 yards, five touchdowns and (most importantly) no interceptions in his last two games. If Love can do that again, and Joe Barry’s defense disrupt those Chiefs receivers, is an upset really that much out of the question?

Well, probably. The Chiefs are, as mentioned, the better team, and seemed to snap out of their funk in the second half against the Raiders last week. They looked complete in a way they hadn’t for about a month, and a Chiefs team that is functioning at full power should be favored over pretty much anyone in the league, and certainly a Packers team that was nearly buried a month ago. This game is more competitive than it looked at the beginning of November, but if I had to make a call, I’d still take Kansas City to win and cover without too much of a fuss. But crazier things have happened, and in the name of chaos…

AFC Bye Week Race

At the moment, the Chiefs are the only team that controls their own fate for the top seed and the bye week in the AFC. If they run the table, there’s nothing anyone else can do. FTN gives them a 46.1% to earn the bye week, so technically, you should take the field, but Kansas City is in the best shape in the conference despite being a half-game back of Baltimore at the moment. If they beat Green Bay, those odds should jump to somewhere in the neighborhood of 60%; the win over an NFC team isn’t going to make a dramatic difference in terms of tiebreakers but a win is a win is a win.

Where does the rest of that 55% go, if the Chiefs don’t win it? FTN gives about 25% to the Ravens, who have that half-game lead and the highest DVOA in the league. 15% more goes to the Jaguars, who look like they put away the AFC South this week with their win over Houston. 10% more goes to Miami, who probably have the East locked up. And most of the remainder is tied up in longshot chances in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, both of whom are probably out of it even if Kansas City does fall here. They’re more interested with the possibility of knocking the Chiefs out of the second seed should they catch the Ravens, which is a more realistic and less impactful possibility.  Every other team but the Patriots are also mathematically alive for the #1 seed, but have no realistic shot.

Should Kansas City lose, both the Ravens and Jaguars would gain control of the #1 seed, with their Week 15 matchup in Jacksonville being the ultimate determining factor. Still, with Baltimore facing the toughest remaining schedule, it’s hard to call anyone running the table. The Ravens ending the year with the Jaguars, 49ers, Dolphins and Steelers is a tough ask for anyone.

I personally still like the Chiefs to run the table here, which will give them the title. Even if they lose, a 13-4 Chiefs team would still be a favorite, in my book. With only one conference loss to their name to this point, and no more head-to-head games against the other AFC contenders, the Chiefs are going to have to lose multiple games to drop the top seed. And against the 21st-ranked future schedule, per DVOA? That’s a hard ask. Maybe the Chargers, playing for pride in Week 18, throw a wrench into the works. Maybe the Good Bills, their backs to the wall and desperately needing a win to stay relevant in the wildcard race, gives Kansas City all they can handle and then some in two weeks. But can you really see the Patriots, Raiders or Bengals knocking the Chiefs off at this point? Those would be rather shocking upsets.

If the Chiefs do fall off the pace, I still like Baltimore, tough schedule or no tough schedule. They can pick up head-to-head wins over Jacksonville and Miami down the stretch to help lock down their tiebreakers, and they just seem to play a tick over everyone else in the conference when they’re healthy and firing on all cylinders. And the first step to the Chiefs falling off the pace would be a loss on Sunday night.

NFC Wildcard

The race for the final slots in the NFC got a little murkier when the Minnesota Vikings dropped to the Chicago Bears on Monday night. Setting aside the NFC South for the moment, we’re now realistically in a four-team race for two playoff spots between the Seahawks, Vikings, Packers and Rams, all of whom are hovering between five and six wins.

There’s a fairly clear pecking order, at the moment. Winning out would give the Seahawks the #6 seed and the Vikings the #7 seed. The Packers and Rams aren’t quite in the same situation. Because the Rams lost to Green Bay in Week 9, they’d lose out in a head-to-head tie with the Packers, and even though they swept the Seahawks, Seattle can just finish ahead of them on record even if Los Angeles wins out. So they’ll need at least a little help, somewhere, to get in.

The Packers situation is a little more complicated. Winning out gets them to 11-6, which gets them in except in a very, very specific set of circumstances. An 11-6 Packers team has the tiebreaker over the Rams, via head-to-head. They would win the tiebreaker over Dallas or Philadelphia via conference record. They can’t be involved in a wildcard tiebreaker with a six-loss NFC South team, because both the Falcons and Saints are already there and still have to play each other again. They can’t be knocked out of the playoffs on an NFC North tiebreaker alone; the Vikings would drop to at least seven losses if the Packers win out, and the tiebreaker with Detroit would be for the division title. That just leaves the NFC West, and specifically the Seahawks and 49ers.

You need a three-way tie atop the NFC West at 11-6, which the Rams would win thanks to their sweep over Seattle and their Week 18 win over San Francisco. Then you need the 49ers and Seahawks to both finish exactly 9-3 in conference; any less and the Packers pass them on conference record. This means San Francisco loses to exactly the Seahawks, Ravens and Rams. To further twist things, the Seahawks’ one loss has to happen not only in the AFC, but to the Titans and not the Steelers, otherwise, Green Bay would beat them on common games. That exact set of circumstances would send the tiebreakers to a strength of victory knot, and if the 49ers beat Seattle and Seattle beat Green Bay (and ONLY in that order), then the Packers would be on the outside looking in. So when I say that the Packers would need help to make the playoffs even if they win out, we’re talking the very tiniest amount of help possible.

Things get interesting as the four teams converge on 9-8, with two divisional tiebreakers being decided before the wildcard ties get hashed out. The Rams have already swept the Seahawks, meaning they’ll finish ahead of Seattle at any point they have the same record. The Vikings still have to play the Packers in Week 17; a Vikings win would give them the sweep over Green Bay. But if the Packers win that one, it will go down to divisional record, which isn’t yet decided but would give the Packers a slight edge. Either way, the NFC North teams would have the advantage over the NFC West squads in the four-way tie because they would almost assuredly have better conference records – the Vikings, because they already have six wins in the NFC, and the Packers because they only have one more game against an AFC opponent and would likely have to beat NFC teams to get up to the tie in the first place.

That’s a short way of saying that this is the game that matters least for Green Bay, as it’s an interconference matchup and least valuable for tiebreakers. If they can just go through the rest of the season beating the non-contenders (Giants, Buccaneers, Panthers and Bears), they will likely have done enough to reach the postseason. The Packers have, by far, the easiest schedule remaining of the fringe wildcard teams – in fact, they have an easier schedule than anyone outside the NFC South, according to DVOA. A win over the Chiefs or Vikings would give them a much-useful cushion and margin for error, but is probably not strictly necessary, considering some of the paths the other teams have to follow.

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Bryan Knowles

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