It’s a bit more complicated than that. In fact none of the 4 teams control their own destiny. Miami does have the conference record tiebreaker, but they lost head-to-head against Baltimore. So:
If BAL wins and MIA loses, BAL is in.
If MIA wins and BAL loses, MIA is in.
If BAL, MIA, and SD win, then MIA gets in based on conference record.
If BAL and MIA win but SD loses, then BAL gets in based on head-to-head.
If BAL and MIA lose and SD wins, then SD gets in.
If BAL, MIA, and SD lose, and PIT wins, then PIT gets in.
If BAL, MIA, SD, PIT all lose, then BAL gets in. This happens because the Jets would be involved in this tie as well, and they eliminate Miami on tiebreak. Then Baltimore has the best tiebreak of the remaining teams.
Even though I cheer for the Chargers, I’m almost rooting for both the Ravens and Dolphins to win. It would be fun to have the KC-SD game be completely meaningless to both teams, but to still control which of Baltimore and Miami makes the playoffs.
Miami is said to control their own destiny because they’ll be in the playoffs if they win. But it’s interesting that they would miss the playoffs if all the contending teams lose.
This isn’t true. Miami lost to Baltimore this season, so Miami loses a two-way tiebreaker with Baltimore. For all 4 of the teams trying for the 6 seed, there is a scenario where they win their game but still miss the playoffs.
Speaking of Baltimore losing, I’m surprised no one has mentioned the catastrophic failure of the Ravens against New England yesterday. I know nobody expected them to win, but I’m sure nobody expected them to lose in such a grand fashion, either. Pitiful.
I know it’s ever fashionable to bag on the refs, but there are 17 crews but not 17 games this season with egregious officiating errors.
As always, if officials do a perfect job, nobody notices but every slight error - whether it was actually an error or not - is noticed and bitterly contested by armchair QBs.
That’s amazing to me; that the season comes down to stuff like this. It’s great entertainment but must be really frustrating for teams at times like this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where no teams can simply win out and make the playoffs.
Yep. Like I say, the most fun scenario is Baltimore and Miami both winning. They play in 1:00 games, and both their playoff lives would then depend on the late SD-KC game, which wouldn’t matter to either SD or KC :).
Oh how I wish you were right but Miami is actually in the drivers seat. My Chargers need both Miami to lose at home to the lowly Jets and Baltimore to drop one to the Bengals.
Here is hoping… I am a Gino Smith fan for a week. :smack:
Yeah, I was the confused one. By Miami losing, it ensured that the Bengals were in the playoffs with their win yesterday, not that Miami was totally eliminated themselves.
Having a 32 team league led me to musing on how the regular season could be modified for a little more late intensity excitement. Ignore the following, it is just random thoughts.
I think it would be interesting for the NFL to institute a playoff qualification round. It would work perfectly with 32 teams, be doable with some other number of teams, but would kind of preclude an odd number of teams. It would work thus:
The last three weeks are called “The End Season” (like End Zone) and are not scheduled until week 13 (week 14 would be an all-interconference pad week). The divisions are broken out in 1st-4th rankings and the teams are arranged into qualification groups with one team from each division (so that no teams has a third regular-season matchup). The games are scheduled so that the 1 and 2 seeds in each group play in the last week.
One team will win each group for a playoff chair (home game in the first or second round). If two tie at 2-1, the head-to-head winner takes the chair, if 3 tie each other (no head-to-head advantage), the team with the best overall record takes it.
Up to three wildcards may be awarded. To qualify, a team must win 2 end-season games, have a winning record overall, and be one of the top three. It could, in theory, work out that there would be no wildcards in a conference.
This would eliminate having top-ranked, locked-in teams slacking the end of the season, allow teams that struggle badly before getting hot a realistic chance at the post-season, and provide an intense pre-playoff action. It would be slightly arbitrary and unfair, but not really any more than current way of doing things.
Why don’t you want teams that have done well all season to reap the benefits of being able to relax? It sounds like you’re punishing them for doing well and taking away the biggest incentive to play hard each week.
I’m not sure I want to reward teams that just get hot near the end of the season. It would allow teams to sandbag early in the year, not playing all their starters so they’re healthy for the stretch run.
There’s a lot of great pre-playoff action right now. Lots of games in the last three weeks have playoff implications - would this really increase that?
In the first place, I am not convinced that teams fail to “play hard”. I think everyone plays to win (I could be wrong, I have heard that a losing team makes more money), some teams just have a better strategy, better talent or better luck. There is an old saying that goes something like, “To win, it takes courage, cunning, endurance and luck – to lose, it takes everything you have”.
Not to mention, a team cannot be sure they are good until their mettle has been tested; it would be a huge risk to slide early on and assume that you could qualify at the end, because the ball takes funny bounces, if you fail to rack up a good enough record, you might not even get a wildcard.
I think part of my concern is that there are teams right now that are “playing for the draft”. I would at least like to see the number of totally meaningless games cut down a bit. If no team is absolutely disqualified before the end of week 16, at least fans will have something to root for, how ever faint.
I believe it would. Half or more of the last games would probably have playoff implications, right now I think it will be less than half.
But, you know, it was just a thought. Nothing of the sort will ever happen.
I’m stuck at work, but my boss (who game away his ticket to the game) is stuck with me, and is bringing in a TV and an HD antenna. He’s done that before, most memorably for the “Vernon Ppost” playoff win over the Saints a couple years ago. This should be a fun one to watch.
