On Monday night, the Miami Dolphins will take on the New Orleans Saints at Caesars Superdome.
Entering Week 16, Brian Flores’ team was the 11th seed with about a 9% chance of making the postseason, according to FiveThirtyEight. As a result of the other games, the Dolphins have already jumped to the 10th seed before playing, with an 18% chance of making the postseason.
With a victory over the Saints, Miami would jump into the seventh seed, the last to make the playoffs, with a 32% chance of playing after the final week of the regular season.
At this point, New Orleans has 21 players on the reserve/COVID list heading into Monday night’s contest. They’re expected to be without quarterbacks Taysom Hill and Trevor Siemian, as well as right tackle Ryan Ramczyk, safety Malcolm Jenkins, linebackers Demario Davis and Kwon Alexander, and many others. They also could miss left tackle Terron Armstead, as he’s been battling an injury that kept him from practicing this week.
Miami’s defense should be good enough to fluster a rookie quarterback who’s taking his first career snaps in the NFL. If Tua Tagovailoa and the rest of the offense can take advantage of some of those missing pieces, especially in the middle of the defense, they could very well extend this winning streak to seven games and give them an inside track to a playoff spot.
A loss, however, would bring them down to a 4% chance to sneak in, and a lot of unlikely things would then have to go their way for them to play beyond Week 18.
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