The Draw Play

I mentioned it in the Chaos Report but I want to reiterate it. We have the potential for one of the most amusing playoff scenarios possible occurring this weekend. Right now, the NFC South sits with a division leading Carolina Panthers at 8-8. The Bucs and Falcons are 7-9, and the Saints are 6-10. The Panthers and Bucs play each other this final week, tomorrow in fact. Whoever wins that game wins the division.

Well, not quite.

If Carolina wins, they are 9-7, and the division is cleanly theirs. If the Carolina Panthers lose, both the Bucs and the Panthers sit at 8-9. This would give the Bucs the divisional tiebreaker through playoff math. However, the presence of the chaos god Atlanta Falcons muddies the waters. The Falcons, who somehow always play like gods after they get eliminated, can completely fuck up the Bucs. The Falcons play the Saints, and if the Falcons win, they are also 8-9. That would put 3 teams at 8-9, and the magical formula of playoff math would then gift the division to Carolina anyway thanks to various tiebreakers. So that’s the possible scenario. The Bucs/Panthers game may not even decide the division.

Frankly, if you aren’t rooting for this exact scenario to play out, you are either a Bucs/Saints fan (forgivable) or a loser who hates fun. This is hilarious. A team can lose the final game against their only divisional opponent and still win the division because another team won a different game, resulting in a 3-way tie clusterfuck and a below .500 winner. While I would greatly prefer the Panthers in the playoffs as I find them more enjoyable than the Bucs, I have to root for the Bucs and Falcons so we get this stupid, stupid result. Every sub-500 playoff game has resulted in some fun (Beastquake, the Panthers/Cardinals 3rd string QB shitfest, and the time Taylor Heinicke got himself a career). This particular year will likely result in the 49ers, Rams, or Seahawks being forced to play in Carolina or Tampa and man, it’ll be so fucking funny. It’ll really piss off the playoff re-seeding evangelists, too.

How did we even get here?

The NFL has always had a weird power imbalance situation with divisions. It’s kind of a built-in problem with the low sample size schedule nature of the league year. Some divisions will have several contenders any given year. Sometimes this is legitimate, sometimes it’s because they got to beat up on a bad division so records get inflated. We don’t have enough games for this weird imbalance to play itself out into more comfortable statistical clarity. So every year we get at least one division that overachieves with multiple threats and at least one division that feels like it doesn’t even belong. I’ve made multiple variations of this same joke now. Once for the NFC North, the NFC East (multiple times), and my personal favorite of the bunch, the previous NFC South version. These were during particularly bad seasons for each, but every year has an underachiever, and many other divisions are propped up by one good team masking the mess, like how the Pats carried the AFCE for 20 years. I could have made this comic about the 2025 AFCN, but their situation isn’t quite as funny.

The Saints had no expectations entering the year. New coach, stuck with a cap-hell roster and no shot, the Saints could be written off immediately. They did find an identity towards the end of this season so maybe next year they can be relevant. The Falcons were all over the place this year with a 30-0 loss to Carolina that is among the worst losses of the season for any team, but also a win over the Bills and Rams? Penix broke his knee again, Cousins is gone soon, the defense is suddenly good, this team makes no damn sense and never will. But what about our “contenders”?

The Bucs started as favorites, having a franchise QB, good offense, and good defense. They played well for the first half of the year and earned some legitimate wins, but then people got hurt and it feels like the team has just given up during the second half slide. The Bucs are a dismal watch. You end up with the Carolina Panthers, a bizarre team with multiple big comebacks and a few actual solid wins (they beat the Packers in Lambeau!). But it’s hard to say the Panthers actually deserve anything, because they also have some really stupid losses.

Go Bucs/Falcons!