Breaking Down the 2023 Playoff Race

One benefit about the NFL’s bizarre 18-week, 17-game schedule is that it breaks the season nicely into three thirds. That’s aesthetically pleasing to me; every season is its own story, and a three-act structure is a fun way to view the year from 20,000 feet, as it were.

You have all your important characters and themes introduced in the first few weeks – the Dolphins’ track team shattering offensive weapons, the debut and launch of C.J. Stroud, the Jets’ hopes crumbling four plays in. Then we get the middle bit of the season with its twists and turns – the Broncos rising from the ashes, the Bills collapsing under their own weight, the Eagles pulling off comeback after comeback after comeback. And now, as in any good Act III, it’s time to start racking up a body count.

As it stands right now, all 32 teams are still in playoff limbo. No one has clinched a playoff spot yet, and no one’s been mathematically eliminated. This is probably the last time we’ll get to say that, too, as the clock is finally beginning to run out on the year. The 10-1 Philadelphia Eagles can be the first team to punch their playoff ticket this week, with a win and some help. The 2-9 Patriots, 2-10 Cardinals and 1-10 Panthers can all finally, officially, and mathematically get washed out. But never mind that no one has ever made the playoffs with a 3-9 record or worse! Until the math goes against them, there’s still just the faintest, slimmest, tiniest sliver of hope. Hey, even the league’s bottom-most feeders can still dream, right?

I admittedly get obsessed with the intricate jigsaw puzzle of playoff scenarios come this time of year. And its fun to run through some of the utterly bizarre ones – like the Packers running the table and still missing out thanks to a three-way tie at 11-6 atop the NFC West, or the Patriots going 6-0 the rest of the way, winning the AFC East thanks only to a four-way tie at 8-9. You know, normal things that a healthy mind devotes hours to on a Tuesday morning in November. Will knowing these outcomes ever become useful? No! Of course not! But some people watch highlight reels, others obsessively track betting odds, and I create massive spreadsheets of nigh-impossible outcomes. I, and other sickos like me, wouldn’t want to live in a world where the Tommy DeVito renaissance was utterly impossible. 

But as much as I love delving into the depths of strength of victory and common games and massive, improbable upsets, we do have a fairly clear separation of wheat from chaff by this point in the season. It’s as good a time as any to take a step back and take stock of the playoff race as we enter the final stretch. We can separate the truly dead from those who are merely very badly burnt; who’s already selling playoff tickets and who is nervously looking over their shoulder. Which teams can still desperately pile on wins, and which are just scheduling fodder the NFL really, really wishes they could flex out of prime viewing on Christmas Day. Let’s triage the playoff race, shall we?

For the record, here are the current standings. In the AFC, the 9-3 Ravens currently sit in the possession of the top seed, despite not actually controlling their own fate for No. 1. The Chiefs, Jaguars and Dolphins join them as division leaders. The 7-4 Steelers, 7-4 Browns and 6-5 Colts currently have the three wild-card slots. Over in the NFC, the Eagles keep on cruising at 10-1, with the 49ers, Lions and Falcons also sitting atop their divisions. The 8-3 Cowboys, 6-5 Seahawks and 6-6 Vikings currently sit in playoff position, but none of that is set in stone.

The Walking Dead (11)

No one may be mathematically eliminated just yet, but outside the world of crazy spreadsheets, we can write plenty of teams off. There are some teams which have performed badly enough to this point that you could replace them with the 2004 Patriots in their prime and they would still likely end up missing the playoffs – holes too big to claw their way out of in the little time remaining.

The Giants, Bears, Commanders, Cardinals, Panthers, Bengals, Raiders, Chargers, Titans, Jets and Patriots have a combined 16.3% chance of making the playoffs in our latest postseason odds, and much of that is mutually exclusive. (The odds that at least one of these teams makes the playoffs is 15.5%, lower than the sum of their chances.) That’s every team with four wins or fewer which does not play in the NFC South, an important caveat, plus the Bengals and Raiders, down a starting quarterback and head coach and currently standing as fourth- and fifth-runner ups in the AFC playoff hunt. There have been six teams with four or fewer wins through 12 weeks who have made the playoffs, but four of them were champions of weak divisions. Only the 1995 Chargers (4-7) and 1996 Jaguars (4-7) rebounded to earn a wild-card slot, as each ran the table the rest of the way to slip into the final playoff spot. The Jaguars even managed to win a pair of playoff games before the Patriots ended their Cinderella run in the AFC Championship Game. So hold on to the dying embers of that faint hope, I suppose.

If any of these 11 are going to replicate that Jaguars run, it’s probably the Chargers. At 7.5%, they have the highest playoff odds of any of the group, and they’re the only team with four wins or less to have a positive DVOA, sitting at 4.8%. The Chargers are an above-average team, and in the NFC, they’d probably still have a good chance of making the postseason. The problem is, they’ve shot themselves in the foot so often this year that climbing out of the hole is next to impossible.

In six of their seven losses, the Chargers had at least one possession in the fourth quarter or overtime trailing by seven or fewer points; six chances for Justin Herbert to lead a comeback victory. Instead, Herbert threw picks against Dallas and Kansas City, had a combined -1 yards against Miami and Tennessee, and had fourth-down failures against Green Bay and Baltimore. It’s not that these are all Herbert’s fault, or that anyone should be expected to pull off come-from-behind victories at the drop of the hat. Indeed, the fact that Los Angeles was even in some of these games is a credit to Herbert and the offense, as the defense has been cover-your-eyes bad at points this year. But coming up empty in six tries hurts, and so the Chargers aren’t going anywhere this year. They’d have to go 5-1 the rest of the way to have a remotely relevant shot. With two games left against Denver, one against Buffalo and one against Kansas City, that’s too much to ask for.

The Buffalo Bills (1)

The Bills are special, and so they get their own tier.

Buffalo currently makes the playoffs in 13.5% of our simulations, nearly doubling the entire group below them. DVOA still loves them; they rank fifth with a 20.6% DVOA. If the Bills do recover from 6-6 to make the playoffs, they’ll be a team no one wants to face. Buffalo can beat anyone on any day. It’s just unfortunate for them that that list includes “the Buffalo Bills,” a team the Bills have beaten many times this year.

Some of the Bills’ struggles have been injury-related, no doubt. They had a -23.4% defensive DVOA in the first month of the season, just before everyone got hurt. That’s dropped to 10.0% DVOA ever since, 27th in the league. It really hasn’t been the offense that’s the problem. That’s despite Ken Dorsey’s tendency to abandon the run game like he was playing Tecmo Bowl with a broken button, or Josh Allen’s occasionally frustrating “screw it, someone’s down there” interceptions. All the advanced metrics have Allen among the top passers yet again this year. He’s second behind Brock Purdy in DYAR and fourth behind Purdy, Tua Tagovailoa and C.J. Stroud in DVOA, making him the most efficient quarterback in football, non-Shanahan offense division.

And yet the Bills are losing by inches. Gabe Davis not adjusting to a pass in overtime against the Eagles. Twelve men on the field goal block team against Denver. A punt return lapse in overtime against the Jets. So many wouldas, couldas and shouldas, and Buffalo’s just ending up on the wrong end over and over. And at some point, you have to stop shrugging and saying that random things happen, and point to these sorts of failures being a trend.

Buffalo’s loss to the Eagles didn’t kill them, but it basically cut out their margin for error. Going 4-1 from here might be good enough for Buffalo to make the postseason, but 10-7 puts them at the whims of tiebreakers. (They make the playoffs in 49.0% of the simulations where they end up 10-7.) Tiebreakers which aren’t helped by a head-to-head loss against Denver, or a 3-5 conference record. To really feel confident, they’ll have the run the table from this point on. The main difference between them and the 11 teams above them is that Bills are good enough to do that. But as the last-place team in variance this season, asking them to win five straight is probably too much.

Coasting to a Finish (8)

On the flip side, you have the teams that are essentially already in, where even dropping every game left on the schedule would give them a puncher’s chance to make it. And this year, there’s more than most.

Our playoff odds currently give eight teams greater than a 97% chance to make the playoffs. That’s a little high, historically, but the addition of the seventh playoff seed has given those top teams an extra cushion to get in. It’s one more safe landing spot for a team crashing and burning over the last six weeks of the season. That’s not to say it’s impossible for a team in this rarified air to crash out. Remember, the 2021 Ravens started 8-3 and then lost every single game the rest of the way, in part due to a Lamar Jackson injury, and ended up staying home. But before the playoffs expanded to 14 teams, you had teams like the 2012 Bears or 2014 Eagles starting 8-3, finishing 10-6, and staying home. You’ll probably never see that again; it’ll take collapses of historic proportions to knock anyone out at this level.

So the Eagles, 49ers, Lions and Cowboys in the NFC and Ravens, Chiefs, Jaguars and Dolphins in the AFC can all count their chickens, even though they haven’t hatched just yet. Heck, we already list the Eagles as having a 100% chance of making it thanks to the magic of rounding. That’s not true, no matter what the internet tried to tell you after they beat the Bills last week, but it might as well be. We have eight playoff spots locked up before December even begins.

These are eight of your nine top teams in DVOA, with no gatecrashers hanging around like last year’s Vikings. The one oddity from that standpoint is the Bills being nowhere close; they’d fit smackdab in the middle of this group of eight, and instead are longshots to make the playoffs at all. The regular season can be cruel, at times. 

That’s not to say there’s no drama here, mind you. While the Eagles basically would lock down home field in the NFC with a win over San Francisco this Sunday, a loss puts both that and the NFC East title in jeopardy, with the 49ers and Cowboys doing everything they can to catch Philly before their Giants-Cardinals-Giants cakewalk to end the season. The AFC is even nastier, where the Chiefs, not the Ravens, control their fate for the top seed, as they would win all potential ties at 14-3. But if they lose, that puts a ton of pressure on the Week 15 Jaguars-Ravens game, as the winner of that would gain control of the conference. In other words, there’s a lot to be decided here, even though we’re already sure all of them will be playing in January.

Polishing the Resume (2)

I hate to break it to you, but the Steelers and Browns are probably going to make the playoffs; both sitting above 75% in the playoff odds as we stand today.

If you’re not a fan of the AFC North, you might moan a bit here. The Browns still have a near-historic level of defensive performance, but their offense, charitably speaking, stinks. They have not been helped by the loss of Nick Chubb and the failures at the quarterback position, but a -15.8% offensive DVOA would be a near historically bad mark to make the postseason. They would be the ninth-worst offense to ever make the playoffs in the DVOA era.

I don’t mind a defensive powerhouse making the playoffs at all, and all but six of the teams who finished first in defensive DVOA did end up making the postseason. At -23.5%, the Browns would be the second-best defense to make the playoffs in the last 10 years. But the other top defensive teams of the last decade could at least put out middling offenses. The 2018 Bears ranked 16th in offense with rookie Mitchell Trubisky occasionally flashing; the 2015 Broncos had the duo of Ronnie Hillman and C.J. Anderson propping up the decaying remains of Peyton Manning, and the 2019 Patriots had an off-year from Tom Brady. The Browns don’t have any of that. Cleveland has a 39.3 percentage point gap between their defensive and offensive DVOAs; that would be the third largest gap in playoff history. And, just from a personal taste perspective, I would prefer to watch Dan Fouts and the 1982 Chargers or Tom Brady and the 2011 Patriots over Dorian Thompson-Robinson and the 2023 Browns.

For those wondering, we don’t have the Steelers anywhere near that”worst offenses of all time” list, as we’ve discussed and tried to explain oodles of times before. But whether you attribute Pittsburgh’s subjective offensive struggles to a particularly tough slate of defenses or to Matt Canada’s refusal to believe the middle of the field exists, it was somewhat refreshing to see them actually put up 400 yards of offense last week against the Bengals. Now, they need to work on converting those yards into points, but hey, baby steps.

There will be those bemoaning the Browns and Steelers making it with teams like the Bills and Chargers staying home. To that, we’d have to suggest that Buffalo and Los Angeles start winning some close games with a defense. But if you do hope one of these AFC North teams fall out, you’re rooting for them to have a losing record the rest of the way; finishing 2-4 knocks each team out of the postseason about two-thirds of the time. Both teams have fairly middling schedules the rest of the way. The Browns get to feast on the Bears and Jets at home, while the Steelers next two games see them face floundering Arizona and New England. Of the two, then, Cleveland does seem to be in more danger, hosting the AFC South-leading Jaguars and traveling to face the Houston Strouds, er, Texans in Week 16.

Even then, though, you’d hope Cleveland’s defense could stand up against either the banged-up Rams this week or the Joe Burrow-less Bengals in Week 18, hold on to 10-7, and see themselves through. And if both AFC North teams do make it, that leaves just one slot in the AFC to fight over, to go along with three in the NFC. And that’s where we’ll find…

The Thick of the Race (10)

We can break the actual playoff race from here into three groupings.

AFC Wild Card

In the AFC, the Colts, Texans and Broncos are fighting over that last AFC playoff slot, with the possibility of a second one opening up if the Browns or Steelers falter. The Broncos are a clear third in the race; Houston and Indianapolis each are between 45% and 50% in our playoff odds, while the Broncos are down at 26.4%. But to even be that high is incredible, considering that they were left for dead after their 1-5 start. And it’s possible our odds are understating Denver’s chances. Denver is still last in defensive DVOA on the year because they were a disaster in the first five weeks of the season, even outside the 70 points allowed against Miami. But since Week 7, when Denver started winning, their defensive DVOA has hit -4.1%, 12th in the league. Couple that with the eighth-highest offensive DVOA since Week 7, and the Broncos have been a very good football team for a month and a half. If they hadn’t buried themselves so deep at the beginning of the year, Sean Payton’s men may have been coasting to a wild-card spot by now.

But they did bury themselves, and are frantically trying to dig themselves out – they’re the one team in this lot who do not control their own playoff fate, even if they win out, thanks to their 3-4 conference record as things stand. Both Houston and Indianapolis can win out and guarantee themselves a slot, in part because they play each other in Week 18 in what could be a win-and-in game. The Texans, in many ways, have the perfect schedule to make a run. They play both of the other teams trying to make a run for that last AFC slot, plus the Browns a rung above, so they can directly impact their opponents’ playoff standings. In between, they get the floundering Titans twice and the Jets once, for some easier games to pad their record. There are no remaining games against top contenders, and so the Texans rank just 27th in future schedule. 

Indianapolis’ schedule isn’t much tougher; they just swap Cleveland for Pittsburgh and don’t get to play Denver. The Broncos, on the other hand, still have to travel to Detroit in Week 15, by far the toughest ask for any of the three teams. I think ultimately the schedule is going to be the deciding factor here. Denver just won’t be able to keep up, and so we’ll get C.J. Stroud versus Gardner Minshew on Sunday Night Football in Week 18 with a playoff spot on the line. Far from the worst outcome the NFL could hope for there.

NFC Wild Card

In the NFC, the Vikings looked like they were going to run away with a playoff spot themselves, but Josh Dobbs’ rocket falling back to earth against Chicago throws them down with the Packers, Seahawks and Rams squabbling over the two non-NFC East wild-card slots.

The advantage there goes to the two teams from the NFC North, as both the schedule and the tiebreakers involve open up nicely for them. Green Bay has the 29th-toughest schedule remaining; easier than anyone outside of the NFC South. Compare that to Minnesota (14), Los Angeles (12) and Seattle (6), and you can see why they have the inside track and odds approaching 60% in our simulations. The Packers have to face off against Kansas City this week, but then get the Giants, Buccaneers, Panthers, Vikings and Bears. That’s three moribund teams, one team fading in the weakest division in football, and a Minnesota team that just laid a huge egg on Monday. Even if Green Bay gets blown out by the Chiefs, they still likely have a game to play with, and not exactly a murder’s row to play against. Compare that to Seattle, which still has the Cowboys, 49ers, Eagles and Steelers on itsschedule, and you begin to see the scope of the advantage Green Bay has here.

Plus, in nearly every situation where there’s a tie in the wild card, the NFC North teams come out on top due to conference record. The Vikings already have six conference wins, tied with Philadelphia and San Francisco for most in the NFC. The Packers only have four, but they’ve also only played seven NFC games; their schedule was front-loaded with AFC teams compared to the opposition. If the 5-6 Packers catch the 6-5 Seahawks, they almost assuredly have caught them in conference wins, as well. Add in the Week 9 head-to-head win over the Rams, and the Packers have everything they need for the playoffs except for an actual spot in the top seven at the moment.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that the Vikings and Packers are the highest two teams here in weighted DVOA, with Green Bay in particular having improved dramatically over the last month. Their offensive DVOA went from -6.6% over the first eight weeks to 15.2% over the last four. Seattle, by contrast, is going in the opposite direction, going from 7.6% to -17.5% over the same time frames. Full-season DVOA is still more predictive than recent splits like this, but there’s no denying that Jordan Love and the Packers have been in significantly better form than any of their rivals over the last month. If that form holds, I like both of the NFC North teams to take the final two playoff spots in the conference, leaving the Seahawks and Rams at home.

NFC South

And whoever finishes eighth will have at least a little bit of a grudge over the NFC South winner, where the Falcons, Saints and Buccaneers continue their slapfight for the top of the division. DVOA still thinks the Saints are the notably best team of the bunch despite their loss to Atlanta, giving them a 57.8% chance of making the playoffs. There’s a little bit of wildcard hope baked into that, just as there is in Atlanta’s 39.7% and Tampa Bay’s 24.1%, but in most situations, exactly one of these teams makes the playoffs, and they do it as the fourth seed. And, of course, they have the three easiest schedules remaining in the league, because they all play each other and Carolina, and no one in the NFC South has a winning record or a positive DVOA.

The thought of one of these teams hosting the Cowboys on wild-card weekend, presumably in the streaming exclusive game, ruffles a lot of feathers. It’s rewarding a bad team for being the least bad amongst a group of bad teams, and if you’re going to arbitrarily divide the league into groups of four, occasionally those groups of four are going to produce nothing but bad teams. But as long as we’re not giving everyone the same schedule, and instead having divisions play each other more frequently than normal, it makes sense to me to give them a reward for coming out on top.

But perhaps it’s time to strip them of the guaranteed home game. If we were talking about the 8-9 Saints beating out the 9-8 Rams for the final playoff slot, there’d be some grumbling, but I think it would generally be muted. The seventh seed there is almost a consolation prize for the No. 2 seed in the conference; sorry you didn’t win the bye, but in exchange, here’s the winner of a bad division for you. Instead, theoretically, New Orleans finishing fourth could cost Jerry Jones a home game, force the Eagles or 49ers to play rising Green Bay rather than the falling Saints, and give the Packers one of the defending NFC Championship opponents rather than Dallas. That seems like more injustice is being done there, rather than just swapping the identity of who the No. 2 seed gets to be major favorites against.