Draw A Line [AFC Playoff Seed Musings]
 

There's now a two-game gap between the haves and have nots in the AFC playoff race. The haves:

Houston 8-1
Baltimore 7-2
New England 6-3
Denver 6-3
Indianapolis 6-3
Pittsburgh 6-3

The rest of the conference is 4-5 or worse. While the Texans hope to fatten their record at home against the Jaguars, Baltimore plays at Pittsburgh and Indianapolis plays at New England.

The NFC side is murkier with eight teams in the mix and Dallas can creep within a game of the Giants in the NFC East if they can beat the Browns at home despite having a losing record at present.

I am truly impressed at what Indy has done. I saw them as a 4-5 win team for the season, and now they are battling for a playoff spot. Very impressive.

If Ben is done for the regular season, I could see Cincy back in, just don't have alot of faith in Leftwhich, and thier D is not what it was.

Obviously, the road is clear for the Texans and the #1 spot. Just need to stay healthy, and not drop more than 2. Baltimore will drop another, maybe 2, they are wildly inconsistent. At the end of the road, I can see Denver and NE fighting with us at the top. We have head to head over Denver, but probably won't have it over NE.

I could see us dropping the NE game and the last Indy game (assuming it doesn't matter much), ending up at 13-3, but you never know about that Oops games. If the last Indy game means something (#1 vs. #2), it will be interesting if Kubiak plays it out, or cashes it in.

Only other probable option for NE to drop a game is when the host San Fran, so they will likely end up with 12 or 13 W's. Others could happen, but that is the last likely candidate.

I forget what the composition of the first playoff-weekend/WC-weekend ? Is it 2 WC teams & 2 Division champs & 2 Byes per conference, or is it 3 WC teams & 1 Division champ & 3 Byes per conference ?

It's pretty clear to me that Denver is the second best team in the conference and quite possibly the second best team in football.

The top 2 seeds are off, 3 plays 6, 4 plays 5. 5 an 6 are the wild card teams, 3 and 4 are the other 2 division winners. Scheduling of Saturday vs. Sunday early/late depends on TV draw/anticipated ratings.

The nice thing about being the #1 seed, is we play indoors throughout the playoffs. Slip to the 2, and we could end up in Denver or NE in late January. We could also still end up at home for the AFC Champ game, but more things would need to fall our way (IE, 4 or 5 knocks off 1 in the division round).

I think Houston matches up well with Denver. Manning is performing surgery with short throws and smart audibles, but I think that is the worst strategy to attack the texans defense. You need big plays or we will create a negative play to kill a drive. Plus our DBs squatted on their routes all day. I think we beat Denver 9 times out of 10.

I would not want to face Brady in bad weather, but manning has always been better indoor. If we somehow finished behind Denver I would not mind playing them in the snow.

That would make Texas clearly the best team in football.

no arguments here.

In a second meeting Wade would attack Peyton with blitzes he hasn't seen. Their running game doesn't concern me and although their defense is very good and seems to get better every week our offense has so many ways to move the ball, control the ball and score that I think we can cause any defense problems.

If our guys stay healthy (and in a couple of cases get healthy) I will be very, very upset if any AFC team proves to be better.

And I would like to take a moment to congratulate Kareem Jackson for not sucking anymore. I would have to imagine that JJo has been spending some quality time with Young Master Kareem.

Gotta think the Texans ain't done with Sunday Night Football, yet. They have to be under heavy consideration to get flexed in vs. Minnesota (wk 16) or the two games with the Colts (wk 15 & 17) and the draw of media darling Andrew Luck....

To add to the post above..... from the506:

It looks like all the SNF games will probably stay in their place except maybe SD/NYJ in Week 16. The matchups up until then are all pretty good.

I totally forgot about flex games ! Man is it ever nice being a real contender and "in the conversation", thanks for bringing it up Arky. Yep, we could get even more PT this season.

Detroit at Green Bay may look like a dog by the time that game rolls around but there isn't anything else noticeably better that week.

Yes, Week 16 (San Diego at NY Jets) appears to be a major candidate for flexing. Minnesota is a good matchup but so are New Orleans at Dallas and NY Giants at Baltimore.

The problem is that Fox has the rights to all three games and the game being tossed back is a CBS game so the NFL might move a CBS game to Fox in order to balance it out.

Another problem for some local fans is that the Texans and Cowboys are presently both scheduled for Noon on Fox that day meaning Fox affiliates throughout the state will have to choose which came to carry unless one of them gets moved to a later time.

The Texans and Cowboys have the same conflict this Sunday, except it is on CBS with Jacksonville at Houston and Cleveland at Dallas both slated for a Noon start. If you're outside Houston, now's the time to lobby your local CBS affiliate.

Week 13 Philadelphia at Dallas on SNF.... if Dallas loses another game or two, that one could be a scratch... that would be a first. However, the NFL loves them some Cowboys...

After another nailbiter, the Texans maintain their conference lead but the division leaders made ground on the wild card hopefuls with one more team jumping into contention:

1. Houston 9-1 (AFC South)
2. Baltimore 8-2 (AFC North)
3. New England 7-3 (AFC East)
4. Denver 7-3 (AFC West)
5. Indianapolis 6-4 (Wild Card 1) (4-3 in conf)
6. Pittsburgh 6-4 (Wild Card 2) (3-4 in conf)
--------
7. Cincinnati 5-5 (3-5 in conf)

The Bengals have two ways to get in - they can overtake Indy or hope that Indy ends the year with six conference losses while Cincy runs the table against AFC opponents OR they can beat Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh in Week 16 and hope to get other divisional tiebreakers to swing their way (PIT is 1-1 in the division while Cincy is 1-3 - Pittsburgh won, 24-17, in Cincy earlier in the season).

So the Bengals are clearly on the outside looking in but if they run the table with SD, OAK, DAL and PHI then beat PIT, it may come down to beating Baltimore in the final week for them.

All the 4-6 teams (BUF, SD, MIA, NYJ, TEN) will need to put on a surge to get into the playoffs.

Incidentally, this site calculates that the Texans have a 72% chance to get the #1 seed and a <1% chance of missing the playoffs altogether.

I really wonder how the injury situations will change things for the AFC when all is said and done. Ben and such hurt in Pittsburgh, Gronkowski hurt in New England (might miss the game against us, even?), all of Baltimore's stuff, Cushing.....

Really interesting. If the playoffs started this coming weekend, I'd be most scared of Denver and New England. Boy, wouldn't it be something if we faced Peyton in the playoffs? I gotta admit, the prospect of facing Manning for a second time in one season scares the shit out of me.

Denver just lost Willis McGahee for 6-8 weeks and none of his backups are all that steady. Without a running game for play action, Manning might be less effective. He still has problems getting his Denver receivers in sync and seems to rely on Brandon Stokely when he needs a critical third down. But Denver's defense is a lot better than when the Texans played them and they just added LB D.J. Williams back from a nine-week suspension.

I'm most worried about New England. But if we stay the #1 seed and they become the #2 or #3 seed, we won't see them until the AFC Championship Game.

ESPN has just posted their "Playoff Machine" online

http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/machine

Just enter all your "what if" scenarios and see how it comes out.