Playoff spots are a finite resource in NFL. Like squeezing a balloon, if one teams playoff chances decline, other teams chances expand.
Take, for example, Sundays game between the New Orleans Saints and the Detroit Lions. In last weeks column, we highlighted this as the most consequential game 12 of the 16 NFC teams had a rooting interest in what took place at Ford Field that afternoon. And, with the exception of the Saints NFC South rivals, they all wanted the Lions to lose. To understand why is to understand the interconnected nature of NFL playoff probabilities. Going into Week 7, the Lions were 4-2 and an above-average team. But they also have a superior division rival in the Green Bay Packers. With Green Bay crowding out the Lions division title hopes, the Lions playoff hopes lay in a wild card spot, which, in turn, crowds out its other NFC rivals.
A Lions loss would have opened the door for the rest of the NFC in the wild card competition.
The Saints, on the other hand, play in the NFC South, where mediocrity reigns. Someone has to come out on top of that mess and make the playoffs, but it is unlikely that a wild card team will as well. As a result, the rest of the NFC becomes largely indifferent to the goings on in the NFC South. To torture our balloon analogy: The NFC South is its own self-contained balloon, with playoff probabilities traded only among those four teams.
Last weeks top game featured 12 teams with a statistically valid interest in the result. This weeks top game, the Seattle Seahawks visiting the Carolina Panthers, features 14 interested teams. None of the NFC South teams won last Sunday, making it even less likely that a wild card team will emerge from that division. So, with the exception of the Saints, Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the other 11 NFC teams should be hoping for a Seahawks loss on Sunday.
The Panthers tie game against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 6 has interesting implications. It magnifies the impact of each game by making projections of playoff seeding more certain. With only 16 regular-season games, teams competing for playoff berths often finish with identical records, requiring the use of tiebreakers (e.g. head-to-head record, division record, conference record, strength of victory, etc.). Those tiebreakers add a layer of uncertainty in our simulations. But now that the Panthers have a tie in their record, tiebreakers become largely moot. Barring another tie game, Carolina is in a game of leapfrog with its competitors in the NFC South half a game out of sync with everyone else.