Denver’s players return to the office this morning, faced with the task of reversing the team’s longest slide in seven years in time to salvage a wild-card berth.
And the most direct route to that spot — as confirmed by the Elias Sports Bureau — is three wins plus at least one Kansas City Chiefs loss.
The Broncos, at present, do not control their own playoff path. This is because there are scenarios by which a 10-6 mark would keep them out of the playoffs. All involve the Chiefs being among the teams in a season-ending deadlock at 10-6; if this happens, the Chiefs would win a tiebreaker with the Broncos on division record, which would then eliminate the Broncos from wild-card consideration if at least one other AFC wild-card aspirant finishes at 10-6 or better.
The bugaboo for the Broncos is the fact that the tiebreakers were changed this decade to emphasize division placement, meaning that in order to break a wild-card tie, a division-record tie is snapped first.
This is what cost the Miami Dolphins a playoff spot four years ago. That year, the New York Jets, New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins, Cleveland Browns and Denver Broncos all finished in a 9-7 tie. The Jets claimed their division crown on the basis of a better record against common opponents, dropping the Pats, Dolphins, Browns and Broncos into a deadlock amongst each other. New England beat Miami on divisional record, eliminating the Dolphins, but the Browns won the three-way standoff among themselves, the Pats and Broncos thanks to a superior conference record.
But back to the present day, and the Broncos’ situation. The key to a potential playoff trip could rest in the Dec. 24 game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Winning that game would assure the Broncos of a conference-record tiebreaker advantage over the Jets, Bengals (because head-to-head gets thrown out in multiple-team tiebreakers unless they’ve all played each other) and the Jaguars. The Jaguars could also go 8-4 in AFC games, but in order to do so would have to finish 11-5, thus rendering them irrelevant for this comparison since the best the Broncos can do is 10-6.
Now, if the Jaguars manage to surpass the Colts for the AFC South, that creates a whole other set of scenarios entirely.
And speaking of irrelevancy, here’s a statistic that is somewhat interesting on the surface, but possesses the cosmic significance of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich:
With an 83.0 passer rating, Jay Cutler has the highest quarterabck efficiency mark of anyone born in Indiana, ranking 2.6 points higher than 1990 No. 1 overall pick Jeff George. He does, however, have a long way to go before officially entering the list of those eligible to be ranked for career efficiency ratings (minimum 1,500 passes).
1. Jay Cutler: 83.0
2. Jeff George: 80.4
3. Bob Griese: 77.1
4. Blair Kiel: 75.4
5. Rex Grossman: 72.6
6. Rick Mirer: 63.5
Tags: Jay Cutler
Win 3, get in to the playoffs and earnt eh right to face the Ravens or Colts…..Delicious..
TSG
http://www.milehighreport.com
I do not understand this ranking crap. What if there are three teams that finish 10-6 and one of them is KC, but the other is Cincinnati? We would have BEATEN Cincinnati, would they still get in over the Broncos?? This makes no sense to me…..no to mention that Cincinnati has beaten KC also. lol
In a 3-way tiebreaker involving 2 or more teams from the same divsion the teams are narrowed down using the divisional tie breaker first. Thus, KC and Denver would be split first before looking at Cincy. In that scenario, the Broncos would be eliminated based on a worse divisional record than KC(4-2 to 3-3).
Cincy would then take the tiebreaker over KC based on head to head matchup.
None of this is going to matter after SD puts a beatdown on KC this weekend.
TSG
http://www.milehighreport.com
Forget about all this , beat the cards is all we have to do right now , get a win and then…..
Denver will make the playoffs if SD destroys KC. And then if we beat the Bengals, we’ll drop them to 10-6 at best, and we’ll get in, beacuse of the head-head win, knocking them out of the playoffs.
we can’t sleep on Arizona especially the way they played Seatlle also San Fran has a solid running which we haven’t been able to contain. We have to take it one game at a time fellas
I agree ke…AZ this week is all I care about. I’m darn tired of us losing. It is time for this slide to end.
yo guys are right, this week is all that matters
if we cant be AZ then it doesnt even matter what other teams are doing
We will be fine. If we cant beat AZ we dont deserve to be in the playoffs. We have the easiest route of all the teams in contention. All we have to do is beat the bengals which will be tough unless our defense wakes up from that coma there in. The bengals go to indy monday night then come to us then have to play an improved PIT team. KC has SD and JAX still. The jets really only have miami at miami left. JAX has a hot TENN team then New England and KC. If we win these next 3 we are in.
One down and 2 to go! If we can beat Cincy and San Fran I believe anything can happen. All the top AFC teams with the exception of the Boltz are showing some real weakness! Cutler is playing well. Better with every game so far. We have a good defence that at times looks great. I believe they will play better if our offence can keep playing well. I also feel we are better of with Foxworth at corner then Alexander. we are week on that side! and not just against the pass. the bolts ran that side every time they ran outside the tackles. Alexander could or would not hold containment on his side LT ran around him every time. I mean all he has to do is not let the runner get around and force him back to the inside where he has help but he kept trying to make the solo tackle and blocking out all the help coming from the middle of the field. Plus Manning showed how weak he was against the pass. Maybe Shanahan will see we are better off with Foxworth which had a good game against the Cardinals?