As we enter the last quarter of the regular season, the topic of playoffs (“Playoffs? Don’t talk about playoffs! Are you kidding me? Playoffs?”) comes to mind. This year, the race looks very interesting; we might finally see some of the more esoteric tiebreakers come into play. Since this is a website and a blog, we can look at different playoff scenarios, looking at the AFC.

Right now, the AFC has three teams at 10-2 (Cincinnati Bengals (CIN), Denver Broncos (DEN), New England Patriots (NE)). Those can’t all end at 10-2, because CIN and DEN play in Week 17. But some tiebreakers potentially become interesting.

Scenario 1: Denver wins out

If Denver wins all of its remaining games, it is the first seed. It holds the first tiebreaker (a head-to-head win) over New England, so New England has no chance of supplanting it. In this scenario, “Denver controls its own destiny” is the common nomenclature; as long as Denver wins, they can’t be replaced.

Scenario 1a: Denver wins out, but the Patriots lose a game, and Cincinnati wins all games except to Denver

In this scenario, Denver is still the first seed, but Cincinnati and the Patriots are now tied. They didn’t play each other, so the first tiebreaker is skipped. The second tiebreaker is “record in the AFC,” both Cincinnati and New England finish 10-2 (the Patriots remaining games are all in the AFC, so any loss there is the second AFC loss).
Now we move to the third tiebreaker: common games. The teams play Buffalo, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Houston as five common games (NE plays BUF twice; CIN plays PIT twice). Currently, the Patriots are 3-1, with one more game at Houston; CIN is 2-1, with games at Pittsburgh and Denver remaining. If the Patriots loss is not to Houston, then New England wins this tiebreaker, with a 4-1 record over Cincinnati’s 3-2 record. But what if the Patriots fall to the Texans?
Then we go to the fourth tiebreaker: Strength of Victory. This is calculated by taking the combined records of the teams that you defeated in a season, and comparing that to your opponent’s defeated teams’ records. In this scenario, Patriots victims have 81 guaranteed wins, and another 25 possible (some games in the future are between teams the Patriots have beaten, so no matter who wins, the Patriots get one win credit). The Bengals victims have 76 wins, with another 14 possible. 3 of both teams’ possibilities are Bills victories, so the Patriots hold a 5 game edge, with a 22 to 11 margin of possibility, so the Patriots likely take this tiebreaker (that’s only three Bills games, because in week 17, the Bills play the Jets, so that’s only upside for the Bengals, not the Patriots).

Scenario 2: The Patriots and the Bengals win out, Denver loses at least one

This scenario looks a lot like Scenario 1a, except that the Patriots don’t fall to Houston, and Cincinnati doesn’t fall to Denver. Both teams are at 10-1 in the AFC and 4-1 in common games, so we move to the fourth tiebreaker again. In this case, it is much tighter - Denver has a better record than Houston. Assuming Denver otherwise wins out, the Patriots project to a minimum strength of victory of 90 over the Bengals’ 89. The Patriots then have 22 more possible wins to the Bengals’ 14, again with 3 Bills games in common. That puts the Patriots at 19 possible games to 11, but only carrying a one game lead going in. Big edge to the Patriots.
What if they tie? The fifth tiebreaker is Strength of Schedule, so we only have to look at the strength of the opponents that defeated Cincinnati (Arizona and Houston) and New England (Denver and Philadelphia). Those are currently 15 and 16 win pairs, so it’d be tight if we get this far.
That’d take us to the sixth tiebreaker: The combined ranking in “Points for” and “points against” in the AFC. This was a lot closer before this last week; right now these teams are first (NE) and second (CIN) in points for, but first (CIN) and fifth (NE) in points allowed. Edge: Cincinnati (2+1 is lower than 1+5).
Really unlikely we’d get this far, but the seventh tiebreaker is just the sixth tiebreaker, but compared against the entire NFL. The Patriots are second and tenth (12), but the Bengals are fourth and first (5), so the Bengals still hold an edge.

Scenario 3: a three way tie

Scenario 3A: Denver beats Cincinnati, but loses any other game; NE loses one

Since Denver holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over both the Bengals and Patriots, they advance to the first seed. The Bengals and Patriots now break the tiebreakers as in Scenario 1A.

Scenario 3B: Cincinnati beats Denver; NE loses one, CIN loses one

Since there isn’t a clear head-to-head tiebreaker (CIN beats DEN who beats NE, but CIN and NE don’t play), we drop to the AFC tiebreaker. If Cincinnati’s other loss is to San Francisco, then the AFC records are sufficient (CIN 11-1 over NE 10-2, DEN 9-3), so Cincinnati takes the first seed. New England doesn’t take the second seed, as we start the tiebreakers over again, and Denver wins on the head-to-head tiebreaker. If Cincinnati’s other loss is to Pittsburgh or Baltimore, however, NE & CIN are tied at 10-2 over DEN 9-3, so we eliminate Denver, and continue to the next tie-breaker (actually, we start over, but fall right through to this point with NE & CIN).
Since common games is the next tiebreaker, it matters which games the teams lose to. Since New England plays Houston and Cincinnati plays Pittsburgh, if only one of those teams win, they win this tiebreaker. But if both teams win or both teams lose, we fall to the strength of victory tiebreaker.
Assume they both lose (otherwise, we assume the Ravens beat the Bengals, and I’m not ready to face that). The strength of victory really favors the Patriots: 81 with 25 possibles versus 77 with 19 possibles; again with three shared possibles. If they both win, we swap out the Ravens and Steelers, and either the Jets or Dolphins for Texans. That’s mostly neutral for the Patriots, but adds three games to the Bengals, putting this tiebreaker far more into the mix.
If the Patriots win those tiebreakers, then Cincinnati takes the second seed, but if Cincinnati wins the tiebreakers, then *Denver* takes the second seed, dropping the Patriots to the third seed.

We can get into even more complicated scenarios with deeper losses, but that’s a project for a later day. First, the Patriots and other teams need to Do Their Job.