The final week of any NFL regular season leaves us with all kinds of postseason possibilities to be decided, and never more so than in the 2022 regular season. Due to the cancellation of last Monday’s game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals because of Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest on the field, the NFL had to create multiple stipulations in order to try and maintain competitive balance in a league that had two teams with one fewer game in the books.
We’ll get into all that in the scenarios below. Suffice to say, there are a bunch of teams with everything on the line in Week 18. Week 18 started Saturday, with the Kansas City Chiefs clinching the AFC’s one-seed, and the Jacksonville Jaguars clinching the AFC South, and the AFC’s four-seed.
Things are less complicated in the NFC. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have clinched the four-seed, and they’ll do so even if they go into the playoffs with a losing record. The New York Giants have already clinched the six-seed no matter what happens in their game with the Philadelphia Eagles… but as you’ll see, the Eagles can move anywhere from the one-seed to the five-seed based on what they, and several other NFC teams, do on Sunday. By the time we get to who can win the NFC’s two-seed, your head may be ready to explode.
In order to provide as much clarity as possible, here is every possible playoff scenario in both conferences for all non-eliminated teams.