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Greg Auman
NFC South Reporter
We’ve been saying it for months: The NFC South is not a very good division, but hey, it’s a close division.
With three weeks left, the Bucs and Saints are tied for first at 7-7 and the Falcons are just a game back, so half the division can say it controls its playoff destiny. The Panthers, of course, have two wins and are one of only six NFL teams already eliminated from postseason contention.
It’s a good time to lay out all the different ways things can shake out in the next 17 days — that’s all that is left of the 2023 regular season. The Bucs are certainly in the best position of the three and the Saints are in much better shape than the Falcons, but it’s complicated.
We’ll cite the New York Times’ NFL playoff simulator a lot here to get a sense of the percentages that are in play. The simulator has the Bucs with a 78% chance of making the playoffs entering this week’s games, the Saints at 39% and the Falcons at 8%. Most of that is from winning the division, but there are certainly models where the division can yield a wild card as well.
Bucs: Win next two, clinch the division
Tampa Bay is in great position to win a third straight division title, something that’s never happened in its franchise history. The Bucs host the Saints on New Year’s Eve, but regardless of that outcome, they’ll hold the head-to-head tiebreakers over the Saints and Falcons, so the other two need to win more games than Tampa Bay to win the NFC South.
The Bucs can’t clinch anything this weekend, but they have the simplest path to the playoffs: Win the next two games at home against the Jaguars and Saints, they’ll clinch on that alone, and could rest starters in Week 18 against the Panthers if they wanted. If they lose to Jacksonville, they can still clinch the division by beating the Saints and Panthers, or with combinations of them winning or Atlanta and New Orleans losing.
The Bucs have enough of an edge that…
Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/nfc-south-playoff-scenarios-bucs-saints-in-control-but-division-still-up-for-grabs
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Publish date : 2023-12-21 18:52:44
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