The not-at-all premature 2011 playoff picture: Week 16

December 21, 2011   ·   0 Comments

The not-at-all premature 2011 playoff picture: Week 16

The absurdly premature playoff picture presents one man’s projection for the NFL playoffs, at each given week in the season ‒ even if that week is unreasonably early. Which, of course, it no longer is.

• In the NFC, my projections match what the playoffs would actually look like if they started today. That’s boring, and I apologize, but there’s just not a ton of intrigue left there. The San Francisco 49ers would have to lose a game to lose the two-seed, and their remaining games are against the Seahawks and Rams. I don’t see that happening. Both Atlanta and Detroit are reasonably safe. Both have magic numbers of one.

• The Dallas Cowboys vs. New York Giants vs. Philadelphia Eagles, however, remains a total mystery and the biggest spot of playoff uncertainty left in the NFL. All three teams have coin-flip games this weekend (Cowboys against the Eagles, the Giants against the Jets), and then the Giants play the Cowboys in week 17.

• There’s also the fact that all three teams have been violently inconsistent, which makes any kind of a prediction here impossible. I chose to go with the way things currently stand right now, because to do anything else would require a tiny bit of faith that any of these teams can pull their heads out of their cans for two or three weeks at a time. I’m not doing it.

• In the AFC, I deviate from the current standings a couple of times ‒ I’ve got the Houston Texans in as the two-seed, where it would be the Baltimore Ravens going by current standings, and I’ve got the Cincinnati Bengals in the last wild card spot ahead of the New York Jets.

• We’ll start at the top. There are three teams at 10-4, the Texans, Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers. If they all win out, the Ravens would win their division, having beaten the Steelers twice, leaving the two-seed tiebreaker between them and the Texans. The Ravens would win that, too, having beaten the Texans in week six. But I don’t think the Ravens are winning out, and if it comes down to a tiebreaker between the Steelers and Texans, the Texans win that, based on their week four victory over Pittsburgh.

• As for the Bengals and Jets, they’re tied at 8-6 with the tiebreaker going to New York. I’m taking Cincinnati, though, because the Jets have two very difficult games left (Giants and Dolphins), while the Bengals have one very difficult game (Ravens) and one that’s not a gimme, but should be winnable (Cardinals). The Bengals are also at home for both of their games.

• Multiple playoff fantasies have emerged for AFC West teams that aren’t the Broncos, but I’m not buying any of them. Why does everyone assume the Broncos are vulnerable all the sudden? Because they lost to the best team in the AFC? What reason is there to believe that they won’t beat Buffalo this weekend, which would eliminate both San Diego and Kansas City? And why would anyone have any faith in the Raiders when they’ve lost three straight, one of them by 20 points, one of them by 30, and the other a 14-point meltdown in the last five minutes of a game? It’s still Denver in the West.

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