Explaining Carolina's chances to make the playoffs.

[hepcat]

And you see, thats a load of crap. I will turn my time and energy to the Charlotte Hornets. Say what you will about the NBA playoff structure, but it atleast doesnt screw over winning teams out of the playoffs

 

Can you imagine being an Arizona Cardinals fan...your team finishes 11-5 and misses the playoffs?  (If Carolina, Arizona, and San Francisco all finish 11-5, Arizona is the team left out).  

 

It is impossible for both Dallas and Philadelphia to both finish 11-5 since they play each other in Week 17.  If one team won out, they would win the division, thus removing them from the wildcard conversation.  However once you drop down into the 10-6 range, everything gets fuged into wild tiebreaker scenarios.

[Razeyfingers]

Props to the OP for using the term "must win" correctly for the first time this season.

[CatZilla]

Most of you are probably already aware of the playoff scenarios for Carolina but allow me to help explain them a little better.  There are realistically three teams competing for two wild card spots in the NFC - Arizona, San Francisco, and Carolina.  Currently Carolina and San Francisco are 9-4, and Arizona is 8-5.  Carolina holds the tiebreaker over San Francisco because of a head-to-head win.  San Francisco holds the tiebreaker over Arizona, and Arizona holds the tiebreaker over Carolina.  After playing with the Playoff Machine for a little bit, I better understand Carolina's chances to make the playoffs.  http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/machine

 

If Carolina, San Francisco and Arizona all finish with the same record, Carolina would be the #5 seed, San Francisco would be the #6 seed, and Arizona would miss the playoffs.  If Carolina and Arizona end up with the same record, but San Francisco finishes with a better record than both, Carolina misses the playoffs.  This holds true through the final three weeks.  

 

Final opponents for all three teams:

 

Carolina:  NYJ, NO, @ATL

Arizona: @TEN, @SEA, SF

San Francisco: @TB, ATL, @ARI

 

Because Arizona and San Francisco play each other in Week 17, Carolina can afford one more loss, finish 11-5, and still be assured a playoff spot.  If San Francisco wins, it would drop Arizona to 10-6 if they won their other two remaining games, and they'd finish below Carolina.  If Arizona wins, it would drop San Francisco to 11-5 if they won their other two remaining games.  Like I said earlier, even if Arizona wins out and Carolina loses one, they'd all finish 11-5 and Carolina would win the tiebreaker.  Everything goes to hell if Carolina drops two of their remaining three games and Arizona and San Francisco both win their next two games.  Needless to say, next weeks game against the Jets is a must-win.

 

TL;DR - Carolina still has a great chance to make the playoffs even if they lose one more game.  But if they lose two more...all bets are off.

 

EDIT:  Okay so for those asking if San Francisco and Arizona both lose in Week 15, will Carolina make the playoffs, the answer is no.  Carolina still has a chance to finish 10-6 or even 9-7 regardless of what Arizona and San Francisco do in Week 15.  Also, it should be noted, that if Dallas or Philadelphia finish at 10-6, they would own the tiebreaker over Carolina because of conference record.  There are a lot of scenarios where Carolina misses out of the playoffs if they finish at 10-6 to either Arizona, Philadelphia, or Dallas.  There are even scenarios where Carolina, Arizona, San Francisco, Dallas, and Philly all finish 10-6.  Like I said before, if Carolina, Arizona and San Fran all finish with the same record, Carolina wins the tiebreaker.  It seems Carolina owns the tiebreaker over Chicago and Detroit.  All in all, to be guaranteed a playoff spot, Carolina needs to win two of their next three.  After that they get into the muddle mess of tiebreakers and you don't want to be there.  This post to show how Carolina would make the playoffs if they only lost one more game, and who their main competition would be if they only lost one more game.  If they lose two more games, like I said, all bets are off.

 

TL;DR AGAIN: It gets REALLY complicated if the Panthers lose two of their last three and finish 10-6.  But finish 11-5 and they are guaranteed a spot.  There is not a scenario that I found where Carolina misses the playoffs if they get to 11 wins. 

you are wrong there is a scenario where the Panthers will be out at 11-5. and that scenario is........... SF/ARI/Hawks all finish 11-5. SF would get the west Hawks would be the 5th seed and ARI gets the 6th.

[TrueBlackandBlue]

Irrelevant. After the Panthers win out and the Saints go down to the Rams we win the division. Yay!

[hepcat]

you are wrong there is a scenario where the Panthers will be out at 11-5. and that scenario is........... SF/ARI/Hawks all finish 11-5. SF would get the west Hawks would be the 5th seed and ARI gets the 6th.

 

You are right sir...except do you truly believe that Seattle will lose out?  

[CatZilla]

You are right sir...except do you truly believe that Seattle will lose out?  

why not since in 11-5 scenario Cards will actually have to beat the Hawks. so that's 11-3 they play a another divisional foe the Rams, also the Giants have been on a row until recently. any given Sunday. 

[CharlottePanther]

That happened to the Bears last year, finished 10-6 and still missed the playoffs. Totally agree it's weird having to watch the playoffs from the outside after such a good season.

I think I will just be emotionally burnt if we go 10-6 and still miss. I mean a crappy 9-7 or 8-8 team in the AFC will get in but a 10-6 team wont. I mean if 10-6 isnt good enough in the NFl, why bother

[CharlottePanther]

As I said earlier, EVERYTHING went wrong for the Panthers yesterday. Literally not one team lost that would have helped us out and add on the fact we ended up losing. Infact more WC threats popped up yesterday. Cards, 9ers, Eagles, Cowboys and hell even the Packers are still in this thing.

Im just not confident we will make it in this year. Too many cooks in the NFC kitchen

[fjblair]

We have a pretty tough game coming up.. for our offense could struggle BIG time agaisnt the jets D.. shutdown corners and a hell of a run defense is trouble for us.

 

D will have to make plays and make points..

 

Defense is due. Got to make amends for Sunday night. I see the D making a statement against the Jets, they were embarrassed in NO and I don't see that happening again..

[Boltergeist]

What's even crazier is I found a scenario where Carolina actually beats Arizona for the final wildcard at 10-6.  It would require Chicago beating Philadelphia in Week 16.  I don't know why this is, might be a "record in common opponents game" for Arizona since they lost to Philadelphia, I don't know.  It just gets REALLY complicated if Carolina finishes 10-6.  It's nice to know they can drop one more game and still make the playoffs, but drop two and finish 10-6 and they have a good chance to miss the playoffs entirely.

 

CAR over ARZ for the 6 seed at 10-6 would have to involve CHI as well. The first tiebreaker would be conference, which would eliminate the Bears, so as long as the Panthers have a better NFC record than the Cards, then Carolina gets the 6 seed. But if the Panthers and Cards finish 7-5 in NFC, then the Bears are eliminated and it reverts to the H2H matchup. Also, you want no part of DAL/PHI at 10-6 in a WC situation, since they would have a 9-3 NFC record.

[hepcat]

CAR over ARZ for the 6 seed at 10-6 would have to involve CHI as well. The first tiebreaker would be conference, which would eliminate the Bears, so as long as the Panthers have a better NFC record than the Cards, then Carolina gets the 6 seed. But if the Panthers and Cards finish 7-5 in NFC, then the Bears are eliminated and it reverts to the H2H matchup. Also, you want no part of DAL/PHI at 10-6 in a WC situation, since they would have a 9-3 NFC record.

 

Bottom line...if Carolina loses two of their next three and finish 10-6, there's a strong possibility they miss the playoffs.  Except for the highly unlikely scenario where Seattle loses their three remaining games and all the NFC West contenders finish 11-5, 11 wins and Carolina is in.

[lola]

At this point there's 5 teams left that could knock us out of the playoffs (well, 7, but 2 of those are going to win a division), and consider that it'd take two of them to pass us to knock us to 7th. Let's start from the bottom and go up.

10. Packers (6-6-1): Rodgers may be back soon, so they could obviously be a threat if we meet in the playoffs. However, the best they can finish is 9-6-1, while our worst is 9-7. Tiebreakers are unlikely to come into play since they have a tie. Basically, if we win one more game (or they lose one) we don't have to worry about them overtaking us.

9. Bears (6-6): They have a game vs. Dallas tonight. Assuming they win, their best possible finish would be 10-6. Also noteworthy is their terrible conference record (3-6), which would be the tiebreaker that would come into play vs. us (we've already clinched it over them). The best their conference record can be is 6-6, meanwhile our worst possible would be 7-5. Again, win one more game and this team is not a threat to us. Them losing tonight would also eliminate the threat, though they play Dallas who is a slightly greater impedence.

NOTE: In theory, both of the aforementioned teams could catch the Lions in the NFCN. Lions hold the H2H tiebreaker over Chicago and have clinched the division record tiebreaker over the Pack. So, for them to win the division, they'd have to finish with a better record than Detroit. If GB pulls it off it would mean that Detroit had finished 8-8 or worse, so that's of no issue to us; but if Chicago pulls it then Detroit would have been 9-7 or worse. If they finish 9-7, we lose out, and their final three games go: Loss to Baltimore, Win over NYG, Win over Minny, then they'd overtake us in the wild-card.

Basically, the moral of the story when it comes to this NFCN trio is: just beat the damn Jets, then we don't have to worry about this whole division until a potential 4 vs. 5 matchup.

8. Dallas (7-5); Philly (7-6): Both of these teams are still very much alive, and kinda worrisome. One will win the division, but the other could still be a WC team. They can both tie or surpass us, and they both currently have less conference losses (both have 2 to our 3). Though it's good that they still play each other Week 17. They could both win out through weeks 14-16, and then depending on their final matchup they'd finish 11-5 (Dallas) and 9-6 (Philly) or both 10-6, while we could be as low as 9-7. Even beating the Jets and finishing 10-6 wouldn't help much since it's not a conference game, and - in the above scenario - we'd still lose the conference record tiebreaker. Honestly, there's so many different scenarios with the NFCE WC team, tonight's game will start to clear things up a bit though. But again, even if one does overtake us, there'd have to be another WC to knock us out completely.

7. Arizona (8-5), 6. San Fran (9-4): First, it should be noted that, in the event of a three-way tie for the wild card, ties within the division are broken first. We can tie with both of these two teams at 9, 10, and 11 wins. Even if Arizona beats SF in Week 17 to even the season-series, SF would win the tiebreaker due to clinching a better division record. So, in any scenario where we tie BOTH these teams, we get the 5-seed.

It actually gets more complicated if we don't tie. This has been talked about ad nauseam in this thread, so I won't dive into these two teams much more. But as has been said, falling behind the Niners and tying with the Cards seems like the most likely scenario where we fall out. Though, it's still not a great one. For SF to overtake us it likely means they beat Arizona Week 17, and the Cards also have to face the Hawks the week prior. And the Titans next week isn't exactly an easy matchup for them either. Tough stretch ahead for Arizona is obviously good for us.

The bottom line is: 2 out of 3 wins and we're in.

Thanks for clarifying. I was tweeting Steve Reed and asked him about winning 2 of 3 and his response was, not sure we gotta watch Arizona. This is so confusing.

[KendrickPanther]

Everyone looks past the Jets but there they are, still in playoff contention. The Falcons game should be a ghost town. I looked at tickets, you can get great seats for 60 bucks and nose bleeds are going for 20.

[jdpanther5]

Thanks for clarifying. I was tweeting Steve Reed and asked him about winning 2 of 3 and his response was, not sure we gotta watch Arizona. This is so confusing.

Admittedly I didn't consider the scenario mentioned a bit ago where all three NFCW contenders finish 11-5. Though that would involve Arizona winning out over Tenn, Seattle, and SF; SF winning their winning their other two games, and Seattle losing out. Unlikely, but I guess anything's possible.

I also apparently had Philly's record wrong before, they're now 8-5. Though Dallas losing helps us more than a Chicago loss would have.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using CarolinaHuddle mobile app