“So what’s Tampa Bay’s deal? The Buccaneers can make the playoffs in a tiebreaker against Washington and Green Bay, which means they need to beat Carolina, have Green Bay lose to Detroit, and have Washington tie the Giants. This isn’t quite enough, though; in order to actually win the tiebreaker they also need San Francisco to beat Seattle, Dallas to beat Philadelphia, Tennessee to beat Houston, and Indianapolis to beat Jacksonville to gain a narrow strength of victory edge over Green Bay.”
You should read some of the Titan game threads on reddit. Trust me, nobody knows better than Titans fans how bad the team is, particularly the secondary. And nobody expected them to get very far in the playoffs.
But getting to the playoffs at all would have been spectacular. When the season began, most Titan fans would have considered 6-10 a decent year, given the five total wins of the last two seasons. I don’t know who your favorite team is, but there are lots of teams who are perennial playoff contenders, so it may seem to you that getting to the playoffs with very poor prospects isn’t much better than not getting to the playoffs at all. But if you haven’t been to the playoffs for nearly ten years, it’s a huge difference.
On the flip side, Carr’s injury is a clean break that wil heal in a matter of weeks, and shouldn’t present any long term problems. Mariota, however, seems to have ligament and joint damage with a multi-month recovery time, and it’s got the potential to affect his mobility after he’s recovered. This could be a career-threatening thing if he loses the ability to scramble.