One of many reasons the NFL decided to expand to a 17-game season over 18 weeks in 2021 was the idea that talk of playoff scenarios would expand to more weeks late in the season.
The NFL is many things, but it is not dumb about generating fan interest in such things, and it worked out about as well as the league could have expected. Last week, only the Chiefs had clinched a playoff berth in an AFC nobody seems to want to win. There were five defined playoff teams in the NFC, but the one-seed was still up for grabs, and all kinds of anarchy at the bottom.
As we head into the final week of the season, we know a lot more about what the playoffs will look like. The Packers have clinched the NFC’s one-seed, and five teams — the Chiefs, the Bengals, the Titans, the Bills, and the Patriots — are officially playoff-bound. Kansas City could have wrapped up the AFC’s one-seed if they beat the Bengals, but they didn’t, and now, the Titans have the one-seed for the time being. That is still in play, with several teams vying for the top spot, the only first-round bye in the conference, and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
In the NFC, six teams — the Packers, Cowboys, Buccaneers, Cardinals, Rams, and Eagles — are in. Where they’ll all stand below Aaron Rodgers and his crew remains to be seed.
Here are all the possible playoff and division scenarios for the final week of the regular season.