The Vikings maintain their tight hold on the Wild Card place

 

 

The Minnesota Vikings had every opportunity to cement their NFC playoff place heading into their bye week. However, losing two games by a combined three points (despite turning the ball over seven times) has left them in a far more difficult position as the season nears its end.

With Monday night’s game affecting solely the AFC, we now have the definitive NFC playoff picture after Week 13. Let’s take a look at the current seedings and the remaining schedules for each team.

The Eagles were blasted out on Sunday, their only loss of the season, but they’ve been playing things close for a few weeks now and have been fortunate. With a trip to Dallas on Sunday Night Football in Week 14, they’ll have a difficult time retaining the #1 seed and, maybe, the NFC East. They defeated Dallas earlier this year, but Dallas is also on a roll at this point.

Remember when the Niners lost three in a row and were no longer considered elite? That was pretty amusing. The Niners thrashed Philadelphia on Sunday and are now vying for the top spot in the conference. San Francisco has blown out both Philadelphia and Dallas this season and is currently playing the best football in the NFC. I wouldn’t be surprised if they finished first when the regular season ended.

The Lions appear to have clinched the NFC North, barring a bizarre collapse. Their defense has cooled off following a blazing start to the season, but they’re still far enough ahead of the rest of the field to win their first division title since the Bush Administration. (If you’re keeping score at home, that’s Bush 41, not Bush 43.) Will Minnesota’s two games against them in the final three weeks have any significance?

 

 

Hey, guess what? The NFC South is awful again. The Falcons are on top of the division now with a .500 record, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see them send a sub-.500 team to the postseason for the second season in a row. That would still be enough to get them the right to get squashed in a home playoff game by whoever finishes second in the NFC East, which I guess is something.

The Cowboys are three games clear of the rest of the Wild Card field, so if they don’t manage to find a way to win the NFC East they’ll almost certainly be the #5 seed as they were last year. Dallas is one of the league’s hottest teams right now and might be catching Philadelphia at just the right time in an effort to get past them in the division race. Their schedule down the stretch is much tougher than Philadelphia’s on the surface, however.

Here’s how the tiebreaker works in this instance: The Vikings are ahead of Green Bay in the NFC North because of their head-to-head victory, and Los Angeles is ahead of Seattle in the NFC West because of their sweep of Seattle. That breaks it down to the Vikings and the Rams, and the Rams are ahead due to their superior conference record.

That means that the Vikings control their own destiny. . .if they win their games, nobody can push them out of the playoffs. Of course, if they (once again) can’t stop turning the ball over, they won’t beat anybody and it won’t matter. But controlling your own destiny at this point in the season is always nice.

With their win tonight, the Packers have climbed into the final NFC playoff place. They defeated the Rams earlier this season, thus they now hold this position. They don’t exactly have a Murderer’s Row schedule for the last five weeks of the year, so it’ll be difficult to keep them at bay. Let’s hope the purple can pull it off.