NFL Tie Breaking help

If the Panther’s drop their home game against New Orleans but finish with a win over Atlanta, they will have an 11-5 record.

If the Arizona Cardinals win out, they will have an 11-5 record.

If the only loss left to the 49ers is to the Cardinals, they will have an 11-5 record.

Only two of the three teams will get into the playoffs.

If the Cardinals win, they will have split the series with the 49ers, but will have beat the Panthers.

The Panthers have beat the 49ers, but lost to the Cardinals.

The tie breaking rules are a nightmare, but

Would this mean that the 49ers would be the odd man out since they are the only club to have lost to both the other teams?

Or would this one make it so Carolina is the wild card, since only one of the two between San Francisco or Arizona could be counted as the highest club in their division?

I believe your second explanation is correct. According to the ESPN Playoff Machine with your results, Carolina gets the 5 seed, San Fran gets the 6, and Arizona is out.

I think Dallas would have need to win against GB to keep the 49ers out. If everything goes as in your example, then Car and SF get the wild cards.

Thank you :slight_smile: I’m trying to keep my hopes up that we can get revenge for the drubbing in New Orleans and can win our division out right.

(‘We’ and ‘Our’ are used from a fan perspective, I am not affiliated in any way with the actual franchise)

The more-than-two-team wild-card tiebreaker requires that a tie within the division be broken first. Arizona and SF would have split their two games, but the 49ers would be 4-2 against NFC West opponents while the Cardinals would be only 3-3, so the 49ers get the spot. This leaves the 49ers and Panthers getting the two wild card spots.

I thought NFL Red Zone said that the 49ers would clinch a playoff spot with a Cowboys loss yesterday (which they did), but there is still a way to keep them out; if the Cardinals win out, the 49ers lose to the Falcons, and the Saints-Panthers loser wins its last game, then the 49ers are 10-6 while the Cardinals and whichever of the Saints and Panthers does not win the NFC South are 11-5.

If you are looking at the list of tiebreakers, note that “Strength of Victory” and “Strength of Schedule” are easy to figure out, since each team plays 16 games.
For Strength of Victory, add up the number of wins of each team that the tied team beat; if the team was beaten twice, count it twice.
Strength of Schedule is the same thing, except that all games are counted, including losses and ties.
(Strength of Schedule - actually, “weakness of schedule”, since it is in reverse order - is also the first tiebreaker for determining draft order.)