Week 14 Playoff Update: Lions, Chiefs Attempt to Clean Up
9 min read
PlaySheet, By Playoff Predictors
Week 14 brings with it three huge matchups as the playoff race really heats up.
Tonight (assuming you’re reading this as this is going live), the Packers and Lions play each other in what is arguably the biggest game of the season to date; one that will determine whether or not the #1 seed is actually in play in the NFC or if the NFC North race is going to come down to the wire. Sunday afternoon, we get a similar situation in the AFC, as the Bills attempt to keep pace with the Chiefs while the Rams try to keep their NFC West hopes alive. And on Sunday night, the Chiefs look to seal the AFC West against the Chargers. That’s not even getting into the significant implications of Cardinals-Seahawks or Falcons-Vikings, either; we are spoiled for relevant games even with six teams on bye this week.
Let’s dive in to some of the nitty gritty details of the scenarios this week and breakdown what really is at stake.
Lions On the Precipice
No NFC team has clinched a playoff berth yet, and that includes the Detroit Lions. This fact was surprising to some people, especially on Threads – some people though that noting that the Lions hadn’t yet qualified for the playoffs was tantamount to saying they were not going to qualify for the playoffs; that it was a prediction rather than just the mathematical reality of the situation. An 11-1 team still technically not in the playoffs is, admittedly, odd, especially with a 10-2 team already in in the other conference. So, for fun, let’s walk through the way that the Lions could theoretically get knocked out.
Firstly, the Lions would have to lose every game remaining on the schedule – a single win or tie gets them in, as all but five other teams in the NFC already have six losses. Next, we need to engineer a massive tie at 11-6 with two of the three runners-up in the NFC South, NFC East and NFC West, and that’s where the scenarios start getting screwy. You don’t need all three divisions to throw up roadblocks to stop the Lions, nor do you need every possible one of the Eagles, Falcons, Buccaneers, Seahawks, Rams and Cardinals to be a problem. You just need enough to blow up the tiebreakers, and the exact combinations that get you there are intertwined and codependent because most of these teams still play each other.
The best way to understand it might be to look at the nine ways the Lions can clinch the playoffs without a win. First, and most obvious, the Lions need to lose out and finish third in the division, with the Vikings and Packers clearing them. That’s the easy part.
Every remaining scenario requires either the Buccaneers or Falcons to lose or tie. The key here is that Tampa Bay has the head-to-head win over Detroit from Week 2, and having the Falcons and Buccaneers both win out ensures that Atlanta wins the division at 11-6 and Tampa is involved in that 11-6 tie. A loss by either NFC South team either gives them too many losses our hands them the division outright, and that’s no good for us.
But we need one more team involved to knock the Lions, and we have our choice between and NFC West and NFC East scenario. Four Lions clinching scenarios involve either a Seahawks-Cardinals tie or a loss by both the Cardinals or Rams (or a Rams tie). The tie would be Arizona’s 6.5th loss, taking them out of contention. That would mean we would need the Seahawks or Rams to get involved in that 11-6 tie, but that’s a problem. The Rams would need to win out to get to 11-6, but they play the Seahawks in Week 18, and we just gave them their 5.5th loss with the tie against Arizona! Losing to the Rams gives them their 6.6th loss, and the NFC West is no longer involved in that tiebreaker. A similar situation happens with both the Cardinals and Rams losing – in this case, both Arizona and Los Angeles are now below six losses and can’t get involved in the 11-6 tiebreak, so Detroit is once again safe.
But what about the NFC East? Four more scenarios that get Detroit in involve the NFC South loss, a Seahawks or Rams loss, and then an Eagles win. Philadelphia winning gets them to 11 wins, meaning they’d have to otherwise lose out to get to 11-6. The Commanders would then have to win at least two of their other three games to take the NFC East to get involved, and they win every possible tie at 11-6 with Philly, either on conference or divisional record. That puts the Eagles and Lions head-to-head, and it’s the only way to get an NFC East team into the tiebreak. Equally importantly, it would have the Lions and Eagles tie on conference record at 7-5. That would send that tiebreaker into strength of victory calculations, and that has not yet been decided. It would also eliminate head-to-head tie problems in three-way ties, which is vital if we’re using any of the NFC West teams to eliminate Detroit – they beat all three of those teams back in September, after all! Detroit’s strength of victory is very good, and it is possible for them to clinch that tiebreaker over the Eagles this week, but it hasn’t happened yet.
To summarize that mess, for the Lions to not clinch the playoffs this week, they’d need to lose and have at least two of the potential NFC South, East and West traps still be available for them to run up against. That’s very, very difficult, but it is still possible, if only just.
And no, this is not a prediction.
Oh, as for the game itself? A Packers win is optimum if you want chaos, and not just because it leaves open those weird Lions clinching scenarios. Per FTN’s odds, a Packers win would give the Eagles a 55% chance to win the #1 seed, with the Lions falling to 34% and the Vikings holding strong at 10%. It would also mean that the Vikings would control their own fate in the NFC North, being able to catch and pass the Lions by beating them in Week 18. A Detroit win, on the other hand, all but wraps up both the division and bye week for the Lions. Philadelphia would be hovering at about 10% in FTN’s odds to take the bye week, with the Vikings as essential afterthoughts. That would leave Detroit in the neighborhood of 90%, and while that’s higher than the sheer number of possible scenarios they’d control, FTN’s playoff odds incorporate DVOA into it’s picks and, well, the Lions have been very, very good this year. Beat the Packers, and the last month of the season will just be final bookkeeping. Lose, and find yourself in a tight race and the possibility of a road playoff game. No pressure, then.
NFC West Elimination Match?
Not technically, no. But Cardinals-Seahawks is huge for that race because, well, someone has to lose, and neither team can really afford to do so in a three-and-a-half horse race. Per FTN’s odds, the loser of that game will be below a 20% playoff chance. That seems low for teams that are within one game of one another, but the NFC West is so tightly packed that the odds are someone is going to get on a hot streak. That’s most likely to be Arizona – the best DVOA of the bunch and the easiest schedule remaining thanks to having both New England and Carolina on the docket. But with five of the 15 games remaining in the NFC West being divisional games and no one more than two games out, the permutations in the division are nigh-endless.
Arizona, Seattle and Los Angeles can all pick up that all-important third divisional win this week, but the Cardinals are the ones that can best use their victory. Beating the Seahawks erases their head-to-head loss from Week 12, putting them in fantastic tiebreaker position – at least one win over all three other opponents. Seattle still has to wait until Week 18 to get their win back against the Rams, the Rams can’t get their Cardinals win back until Week 17, and the mostly-dead 49ers need wins over both the Rams (in Week 15) and Cardinals (in Week 18) just to crawl back to even in the division. One way or another, the winner of ARI-SEA will be in first place after this week, but there’s a long way to go before we close the door on this division.
Chiefs Slamming the Door?
While Kansas City has already clinched a playoff berth, they haven’t quite won the AFC West just yet. They can pull that trick off this week, with a win over Los Angeles simultaneously eliminating the Chargers and Broncos. Knocking two teams out at once is doing things in style, and it’s likely we’ll be talking about the AFC West champion Chiefs at this time next week.
That being said, the Chiefs have been scraping by by the skin of their teeth so far. They’re still a good team, don’t get us wrong, but they’re 11-1 because they’ve been very fortunate, and have been able to take advantage of that good fortune. It wasn’t “lucky” to block a game-winning field goal, but it’s not something that’s exactly repeatable going forward. It wasn’t “lucky” that the Ravens had a toe out of the end zone in Week 1, but they can’t count on being an inch correct every time in the future. It wasn’t “lucky” that the Raiders….OK, maybe they lucked out against the Raiders when their rookie center had a disaster on the snap. But even if it’s not fair to claim the Chiefs have lucked out so far, it’s pretty clear to even the most die-hard Kansas City fan that the Chiefs aren’t quite as good as their 11-1 record would indicate.
Let’s say for a moment that the law of averages catches up with the Chiefs, and the Chargers do pull off the upset this week. Where does that leave the state of the AFC West?
The Broncos would still be in tremendous trouble. They would need to beat the Chargers, Bengals and Chiefs in Weeks 16-18, and have the Chiefs lose to the Browns and Steelers in Weeks 15 and 17 just as a starter. Oddly, the Broncos-Colts and Chiefs-Texans games wouldn’t have a single necessary result for Denver, though they couldn’t afford both a loss and a Chiefs win. But the AFC South matchups aren’t common games, meaning that results there could boost the Broncos’ conference record without killing their common games tiebreaker, so there’s a few degrees of freedom.
The Chargers would be in even better shape, with no single result being needed the rest of the way – getting their win back after their Week 4 loss to the Chiefs would be huge. They would need to win at least two more games and have the Chiefs lose at least two more games, but that’s theoretically doable – if they win this week.
Let’s even go one step further. Let’s assume that, in addition to the Chargers upsetting the Chiefs, some of the easier wins for the trailing teams go through – specifically, that Los Angeles handles the Buccaneers and Patriots, while the Broncos take care of the Colts. Where would that hypothetical leave the state of the race?
Excluding ties, there would be 128 combinations of results left in the divisional race. The Chiefs would still win 100 of them, firmly in control of the race. But the Chargers would have 24, and the Broncos would hang on to four. Well, four-ish – two of them would come down to strength of victory, where the Broncos would have an advantage at the moment, but that hasn’t been clinched yet. Still, things would still be in play.
In short, the Chargers do have an outside shot of stopping the Chiefs from putting together a 10-year long divisional title streak, one short of the Patriots’ all-time record. But that’s if and only if they pull off a win this week. Otherwise, it’s business as usual in the AFC West.
About The Author
