Cancel your plans for the first weekend in January, Browns fans. The football team will almost certainly be playing in the postseason for the first time since after the 2002 season.
The 9-3 Browns have the third-best record in the AFC, trailing only the Pittsburgh Steelers (11-0 entering Monday Night Football) and Kansas City Chiefs (11-1). The Browns have a one-game lead on the second-place team in the AFC East (either Miami or Buffalo, who also plays Monday) and the runner-up in the AFC South, either the Tennessee Titans or Indianapolis Colts.
Las Vegas is two games back, Baltimore 2.5. The confluence of records, tiebreakers and probability odds of the upcoming schedule determine the Browns have a 97 percent chance of making the postseason, per NBC.
From NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast, a screengrab of Steve Kornacki’s enthusiastic presentation of the AFC playoff odds (via Reddit):
The Browns can’t quite mathematically clinch a postseason berth by defeating the Ravens in Week 14, but it’s an essential lock if Cleveland beats Baltimore.