A bit of a nerdy precursor before I get started. I generate my playoff picture previews by running a software program I wrote that calculates what the playoffs would look like by iterating through all of the possible outcomes for the upcoming week. In a week without byes, there are 65,536 possibilities. It takes less than a minute to calculate all of those. Over two weeks with no byes, there are 4,294,967,296 possibilities which would take 7-8 days to calculate. Not really a reasonable time frame to report out on a week-by-week basis. With two less games in each of week 10 and 11, there are 268,435,456 possibilities that can be processed in 10-11 hours. Making now a good time to look ahead to how the playoff picture could look two weeks ahead.
This time, I'm going to start off with the NFC since it's a bit less exciting. Three of the four current division leaders are locked in through the next two weeks: the Giants, Falcons, and 49ers are all locked in. The Bears will most likely retain control in the North, but if they don't, they will have a wild card spot. The Packers will lead the North if the Bears don't. To overtake the Bears, the Packers will need the Bears to lose to both the Texans and 49ers (completely possible) while Green Bay must defeat the Lions in Detroit (the Packers have a bye in week 10).
9 of the remaining 12 NFC teams has a shot at being a wild card at the end of week 11. Only Philadelphia, Washington, and Carolina are too far out of the picture. The most likely wild card is the the non-division leader out of the Packers and Bears. That team is the wild card in 75% of the possibilities. The second most likely, not surprisingly, is the current #6: the Seattle Seahawks. The Seahawks take a spot in 50.33% of the iterations. The full list of percentages is:
| 1. | Packers/Bears | 75.00% |
| 2. | Seattle Seahawks | 50.33% |
| 3. | Minnesota Vikings | 32.13% |
| 4. | Detroit Lions | 25.00% |
| 5. | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 12.50% |
| 6. | St. Louis Rams | 2.34% |
| 7. | Arizona Cardinals | 1.10% |
| 8. | Dallas Cowboys | 0.88% |
| 9. | New Orleans Saints | 0.72% |
Granted, the Rams, Cardinals, Cowboys, and Saints are all long shots, but the fact that they could move into a wild card spot in week 11 goes to show that by no means are any of them done.
Moving onto the AFC, there are more teams that don't have a shot at being in the picture after week 11 (the Bengals, Browns, Jaguars, Titans, and Chiefs) but none of the teams are locked in as division leader and only one (the Texans) is locked in as being part of the picture.
The AFC East will most likely be led by the Patriots (89.06% of simulations), but if they falter, the Dolphins (6.25%) and Bills (4.69%) are primed to take over. The Ravens are tops in the North in 62.50% of the possibilities with the Steelers taking the lead in the other 37.50%. The Texans at 93.75% will likely lead the South, but if not, the Colts are ready to take over. The West currently belongs to the Broncos (62.50%) but the Chargers could move to the top (37.50%).
With little clarity on who will be the division leaders, I think it's most useful to look at the wild card possibilities based on a team's probability to be one of the wild card teams when they aren't the division leader (i.e. the Texans are a wild card team in 6.25% of the iterations and were a non-division leader in 6.25% of iterations making them a wild card team 100% of the time they aren't the division leader.). The list of those percentages is (the likely division leaders are marked with an asterisk):
| 1. | Houston Texans * | 100.00% |
| 2. | Baltimore Ravens * | 97.92% |
| 3. | Indianapolis Colts | 73.25% |
| 4. | Pittsburgh Steelers | 48.75% |
| 5. | Denver Broncos * | 42.71% |
| 6. | Miami Dolphins | 22.12% |
| 7. | San Diego Chargers | 20.47% |
| 8. | New England Patriots * | 18.69% |
| 9. | Oakland Raiders | 2.96% |
| 10. | Buffalo Bills | 2.23% |
| 11. | New York Jets | 1.12% |
It's interesting (to me) to note that if the Broncos or Patriots stumble and lose their top spot, that they're more likely to completely fall out of the picture rather than just to drop into a wild card spot.
I found the two week projections to be interesting, but what will be more interesting will be to see which of these teams have fallen off of the radar after week 10 and then to see who actually has the spots in week 11 especially if it's one of the long shots.
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