Week 18 Playoff Update: Last Call for the Postseason…

We’ve made it! 256 games down, just 16 left to go, and nearly all of them mattering for somebody, somewhere. There are 20 teams still alive for postseason, and all but four of them have yet to lock in their seed. Heck, the Buffalo Bills can finish as high as #2…or get washed out of the playoffs entirely. So, there’s a lot to play for as we enter the final stretch of the year.

Week 18 sees the NFL change it’s schedule around to maximize drama. They pick out three games to be standalone island contests; one on Sunday and two on Saturday. They don’t always do the best job selecting these games, but they did a better-than-average job this year. The Sunday Night game will be the Bills taking on the Miami Dolphins for the AFC East title, so that game will matter no matter what happens elsewhere on the schedule. From a marketing standpoint, that was the right call. From a playoff drama perspective, it was the second-best call, which is still fair enough. It is possible for Buffalo to clinch a playoff berth before kickoff, which remove some of the stakes from the matchup, But, hey, a home game is nothing to sneeze at, so even in the worst case scenario, we’ll have stakes.

Slightly better would have been the Indianapolis Colts versus the Houston Texans, as the winner makes it through and the loser goes home no matter what. We don’t know if the winner will win the AFC South or just make it in as a wildcard; that’ll depend on results elsewhere, but it’s the most playoff-like of all the games on the schedule. The NFL has isolated that one on Saturday night, and it really is a nitpick that the Dolphins-Bills game might have slightly less stakes, so good job on the NFL for picking these two.

The third game isolated game is the odd choice. It’s the Baltimore Ravens against the Pittsburgh Steelers, with Baltimore having nothing to play for. Pittsburgh has the oddest playoff scenarios — they’re not necessarily in with a win, and not necessarily out with a loss — so maybe it makes sense to put them first. But this game could give the Bills a playoff spot before they take the field, so it’s an odd choice to go first. A better pick might have been Saints-Falcons. The winner of that one will be in line to win the NFC South…if Tampa Bay loses to the Panthers. So it would put the highest stakes on TB-CAR, while not significantly hurting anyone else’s playoff odds. Then again, broadcasting an NFC South battle to a national audience might violate some sort of decency standards, so I suppose you can give the league some defense here.

Let’s break down the playoff races one last time as we get ready for Week 18.

AFC

Let’s answer the obvious question first — what the heck is the Broncos/Raiders game doing there? You wouldn’t think a matchup between two eliminated teams would matter, but it does in the very specific scenario where the Steelers and Jaguars tie at nine wins. If it’s just the two of them, then the Jaguars win the tiebreaker thanks to their Week 8 win. But a Broncos win over the Raiders would also get them to nine wins, and while Denver can’t make the playoffs, it does change the tiebreakers. The Jaguars do not have a head-to-head sweep as they did not play Denver this season. The three teams would be tied at 6-6 in the conference and not have enough common games to go around, so it would go down to strength of victory. There, the Steelers have a significant advantage over both Jacksonville and Denver — wins over Cleveland and Baltimore will do that for you. Pittsburgh would thus win the seventh seed, knocking Jacksonville out.

Five teams here control their destiny, and two of them are the aforementioned island games. The winner of Dolphins-Bills will be the AFC East champs and the #2 seed. The winner of Colts-Texans will make the playoffs. And the Jaguars will clinch the AFC South with a win.

That leaves poor Pittsburgh, being battered around like a leaf on the wind. Beating the Ravens on Saturday doesn’t clinch anything for them; wins by the Bills and Jaguars would also knock them out. Probably. The graphic above only shows wins and losses, but it turns out that the Steelers would also require the Colts and Texans to not tie in order to be eliminated despite beating Baltimore. The odds of that mattering are incredibly low, and so we’ve willed it into existence just by talking about it, I’m sure.

Similarly, losing to the Ravens’ backups also wouldn’t necessarily knock the Steelers out, though they’d be sitting in a world of hurt. They’d then need that Denver scenario to come into play, with the Broncos winning and the Jaguars losing to squeak in at 9-8. It’s unlikely to say the least, but it’s still there. And so we’ll not really know anything for sure after the first game of the weekend!

If Vegas knows all and all the favorites win, then the Steelers will beat the Ravens…but they’ll end up going home anyway. The public is backing both Buffalo and Jacksonville (and not predicting a bizarre tie), and so the Steelers are on the couch. Assuming Vegas is right on everything, you’d get the following first-round matchups:

• #7 Indianapolis Colts @ #2 Buffalo Bills
• #6 Miami Dolphins @ #3 Kansas City Chiefs
• #5 Cleveland Browns @ #4 Jacksonville Jaguars

A rematch of the Germany game between the Chiefs and Dolphins would not go amiss, nor would a replay of the topsy-turvy 39-38 game Cleveland and Indianapolis played back in October.

It’s that Dolphins-Bills game which really seems to be the crux of the whole playoff picture. There are quite a few likely scenarios with us running the game back in the playoffs — at either stadium, at that. I am here for the novelty of the Bills being either #2 or eliminated, as well. Should be a good one.

NFC

We can split the NFC into the top seeds and the bottom seeds. Let’s start at the top.

The combination of the Cardinals’ upset over Philadelphia and the referee show at the end of Dallas-Detroit has sucked most of the drama out of the top of the conference, so we’ll speed through this.

Because the graphic shows only wins, we are missing one possible scenario — a Cowboys loss plus an Eagles tie is the only way Philadelphia can get the #3 seed. So that’s kind of fun.

Dallas controls their fate; win and they’re the #2 seed no matter what. They are currently 13-point favorites over the Commanders. Never say never, I suppose, but I think we can safely call this race over, with SF-DAL-DET-PHI being your ordering for the first, second, third and fifth seeds. If I’m the Lions, I would rest starters in Week 18 — but that does not appear to be Dan Campbell’s plan. It seems rather dangerous to me with very little in the way of possible return, but then again, I’m no kneecap biter.

There is more drama at the bottom of the NFC — drama enough that it takes two cards to show all 64 scenarios.

Ah, that’s the stuff.

Note that, again, we’re only showing wins on the graphic. Thus, we’re missing the strange-but-true scenario where Tampa Bay ties Carolina, while the Packers and Seahawks both lose, giving the Buccaneers the seventh seed. A Carolina tie altering the outlook of the playoff race would be a very strange way to start 2024.

The Buccaneers control their playoff fate here, with a win giving them the NFC South and a loss eliminating them entirely. So do the Packers, with a win over Chicago guaranteeing them a playoff spot. The Rams are just playing for seeding, while the Saints, Falcons, Seahawks and especially Vikings all need help to make anything happen.

The Vikings have the longest shot for anyone this week, with only a couple splotches of purple on the charts after their no-show against the Packers on Sunday night. They need to not only beat the Lions — who, again, are not resting starters — but also have the eliminated Bears upset Green Bay, the eliminated Cardinals upset Seattle, and either the eliminated Panthers upset the Buccaneers or the Falcons beat the Saints. Hey, at least they have one contender on their side, for certain values of the word ‘contender’. It wouldn’t be the craziest final-day scenario to ever come through, but it’d be pretty high up there.

The other oddity that pops out looking at the charts is the Saints coming in as a possible 7th seed, with the NFC South sending two teams to the postseason. To say that feels unlikely and perhaps undeserved would be an understatement, to say the least, but the Saints would at least have a winning record and be the last nine-win team left standing.

If we had chalk results around the league, this would be your NFC wildcard round:

• #7 Los Angeles Rams @ #2 Dallas Cowboys
• #6 Green Bay Packers @ #3 Detroit Lions
• #5 Philadelphia Eagles @ #4 Tampa Bay Buccaneers

That isn’t quite as enticing as the AFC matchups, if I’m honest with you. The Cowboys routed the Rams in October 43-20. The Eagles had a little more trouble with the Buccaneers in September, only beating them 25-11, but the final score was closer than the actual game was. At least the Packers did upset the Lions in November, but otherwise, this is a fairly unappealing set of rematches. Ah well.

Not that this is a foregone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination. Seahawks-Cardinals and Packers-Bears are both within three points in the odds, and no one is more than a -5.5 favorite. Even if you just assume SEA-ARI and CHI-GB are in play, that opens up the back door for the Saints to knock Green Bay out or for Los Angeles to slide up to that sixth seed instead, setting up Mike McCarthy versus the Pack and Matthew Stafford returning to Detroit in round one. There are your storylines. That would be the most interesting set of outcomes in the NFC, so that’s what I’ll be rooting for on Sunday.

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