Rooting for Chaos

We have two weeks left in the NFL regular season, but the NFC playoff field is more or less set. The Cowboys and the Eagles are still scrapping for the NFC East title, but of the other five slots, four are already clinched and the last has a 97 percent chance of going to Minnesota, according to 538’s playoff models. Barring something extremely unlikely, the 49ers, Seahawks, Saints, Packers, and Vikings are going to be in the playoffs.

Of course, just because they have spots in the field locked up doesn’t mean all the drama is gone. Because there is a lot at stake with the seeding they get. Two of these teams will clinch a first round bye, and another will at least get a home game to open things up. The last two will likely have to go on the road the entire way if they have any hope of making it to the Super Bowl.

The fourth seed will go to whoever stumbles out of the East, but the remaining five teams are all capable of finishing in any of the other five spots. Because of division restrictions there are some limitations on how many orders are possible (the Packers and Vikings can’t both be wild cards, for example), but that still leaves 48 possible combinations for these five teams.

I’m not going to go through all 48. Because I have a 12 hour drive tomorrow, and I really don’t care that much. I am going to focus on the most interesting, most chaotic outcome possible: the one that sees all five teams finish with the same 12-4 record.

To do this, we’re going to have to talk about tiebreakers. The NFL has a rigidly defined but occasionally confusing set of tiebreakers, which you can read about to your heart’s content here. But a few basic rules:

• Ties within the division are broken first. So even though San Francisco has the tiebreaker over New Orleans and Green Bay, it doesn’t matter if Seattle ends up with the tiebreaker over them.
• The first tiebreaker is always head-to-head. In a three team tiebreaker, it only matters if one team has beaten or lost to both of the other two.
• The next tiebreaker between divisional opponents is record in the division. After that is record against common opponents, then record within the conference. It rarely gets past that…but just hold onto that for now.
• For non-division ties, the tiebreaker if they haven’t played head-to-head is conference record. After that it only has common opponents before things get weird.

Okay, now lets get into what has to happen for every team to end up 12-4.

NFC North

This one is the simplest—and most likely—outcome. The Vikings already have four losses, so they need to win both of their last two games. Since they play the Packers next week, that gives Green Bay a fourth loss. Which means that the Packers then have to beat Detroit in Week 17.

This will leave both teams with a record of 12-4, with the head-to-head series split between them. The Packers, however, will have swept against the Bears and the Lions for an overall division record of 5-1. The Vikings still have the early season loss to the Bears hanging over them (Green Bay’s good fortune that they managed to dodge Chase Daniel), which will knock them down to one of the Wild Card spots.

NFC South

In theory this should be even more straightforward than the North. The Saints are 11-3 right now, so they have to split their final two games in order to finish 12-4. They’ve already clinched the division, so there’s no worry about tiebreakers there.

However, the outcome could very easily depend on which of the final two games they drop. This weekend they go on the road to face Tennessee, while in the last week they travel to Carolina. Of the two, they would rather lose the former, since that would mean an additional win in conference (and over a common opponent if they end up in a tie with Green Bay or Seattle).

But to truly understand the implications of this, we need to figure out the NFC West.

NFC West

These two teams are both 11-3, so they would each have to go 1-1 over the final two games. Since they play each other in the last week, there are only two ways this can go. Either the Seahawks lose to Arizona and then beat the 49ers, or the 49ers fall to the Rams and then beat Seattle.

The first scenario is simple. This would give Seattle two head-to-head wins over San Francisco, and thus the division title. This would drop San Francisco into the Wild Card, where a worse record against common opponents would slip them below the Vikings to the sixth seed.

This leaves a three way tie among the division winners to sort out. The Saints have a win over the Seahawks from earlier in the season, but since they haven’t played Green Bay that doesn’t matter. The tiebreaker then goes to conerence record.

This is where it matters which of the final two games New Orleans won. Because in this scenario both Green Bay and Seattle will be 9-3 in conference, while with a loss to the Panthers the Saints would be 8-4. That drops them to the third seed and leaves the Packers and the Seahawks to fight it out for home field advantage (the Seahawks would win this, having gone 5-0 vs common opponents to Green Bay’s 2-3).

If, however, New Orleans beats the Panthers but loses to the Titans, all three teams would have the same conference record. And this is where things get messy. Because the next tiebreaker is record against common opponents, except that only applies when there are at least four common games. And since the only common opponents for all three of these teams are San Francisco and Carolina, this tiebreaker gets wiped off the book.

So what comes next? The answer is Strength of Victory. Basically add up the win totals for every team each of these three has beaten, and whoever has beaten a more difficult schedule gets the top seed. And, fortunately for my sake, no matter how the other games go over the next two weeks, if we find our way into this exact situation the toughest strength of victory will belong to Seattle.

At that point the battle for the first round bye belongs to New Orleans and Green Bay. Once again they haven’t faced off head-to-head, and once again they have the same conference record. But this time, there are four common opponents, for five games total. Unfortunately, these two teams have the same 4-1 record in these games. So once again we go to strength of victory. And once again, no matter how things play out the Saints will win the tiebreaker.

So that’s what happens if Seattle wins the NFC West. But what if the division goes the other way? What if San Francisco comes out on top?

Before we get into how that could happen, let’s deal with how the tiebreakers go from there, because it is very straightforward. The 49ers have beaten both the Packers and the Saints, so they get the top seed. And the battle for number two is exactly as it was in the Seattle example, meaning the Packers once again are number three. And it’s even easier in the wild card, where Seattle’s head-to-head victory over Minnesota gives them the higher seed.

But how exactly would both Seattle and San Francisco finish 12-4 and have the tiebreaker go to the 49ers? Obviously San Francisco would have to win in Week 17 to make the head-to-head series even, which means they would also have to lose to the Rams in Week 16. At that point, the 49ers and Seahawks would have:

·       1-1 record head-to-head

·       4-2 record in division

·       11-3 record against common opponents

·       9-3 record in conference

And again we have to dive into strength of victory. This one is a little easier however, since in the scenario we laid out nine of the twelve victories for each team are the same. We only need to look at the three teams beaten by one of these teams but not by the other. Here are those teams, alongside the range of possibilities for their end of season outcomes.

 

As you can see, this could go either way. The 49ers have the edge by virtue of beating the Saints, but if the Redskins lose out while both the Cowboys and the Falcons win out, the Seahawks will win the tiebreaker. And of course, they could end up tied again, which then goes to a tiebreaker based on overall strength of schedule, both wins and losses.

This turns out to be easy however, since the two teams play the exact same schedule apart from their matchups with the North and East division. And as we can see above, if the Vikings and the Packers both finish at 12 wins the Seahawks are guaranteed to have the more difficult schedule.

This brings me to my favorite scenario. Let’s say Washington loses their final two games against the Giants and the Eagles (very doable). And then let’s say the Cowboys beat the Eagles and the Giants, while the Falcons lose to Jacksonville this weekend. In that case, the entire division will come down to the Week 17 matchup between the Falcons and the Buccaneers. With a Buccaneers win, the 49ers will be the top overall seed while the Seahawks claim the fifth seed. But if Atlanta wins, Seattle will have home field advantage through the NFC side of the playoffs, while San Francisco slides all the way down to the sixth seed.

I don’t know about you, but I know what I’m rooting for the last two weeks of this season.