Ah, the NFC South.
We are here to rebrand the division, if only for one story. This is not the worst division in the NFL. Yes, all four teams have losing records in mid-December, but its four teams have combined to win three more games than the AFC South. And since we’ve established it’s not the worst division, let’s point out what it is: The most competitive division in the NFL.
With four weeks to go, the difference between first and last place is just two games, making the NFC South the most tightly packed division in the league. In the last decade, only once has a division finished with so little separation from top to bottom — last year’s AFC North, which produced a Super Bowl team in the Bengals.
One of these four NFC South teams will host a playoff game, against a wild card with potentially as many as 14 wins. But bad division winners can still win playoff games. Since 2002, four of the five teams to win a division with a .500 record or worse managed to win in the wild-card round.
So embrace the chaos. This is a rare final month of the season where all four teams have a shot, and with four division games left, these teams have to go through each other to get to the playoffs. We’re going to lay out where things stand for all four teams, from the simplicity of the Buccaneers and Panthers, who both control their own destiny if they win out, to the Saints, who need considerable help to get in.
Want percentages? The New York Times’ wonderful playoff simulator has the Bucs with a 76% chance of winning, the Panthers at 18%, the Falcons at 5% and the Saints at 1%. Fivethirtyeight’s model has it much closer — Bucs at 65%, Panthers at 31%, Falcons at 4% and Saints at 0.7%. Here’s everything you need to know about all four teams’ chances.
Bucs (6-7)
Tampa Bay is coming off a humbling 35-7 loss to the 49ers, but because they’re 3-1 in the division, they’re still sitting pretty. The Bucs can lose their next two games (vs. Bengals and Cardinals) and fall to 6-9, and they’d still be in control of their playoff fate, knowing if they beat the Panthers and Falcons in the final two weeks, they would win the South at 8-9.
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Because Carolina beat them in Charlotte earlier this season, the Panthers are where Tampa Bay is most vulnerable. If the Bucs beat Carolina on New Year’s Day in Tampa, on that outcome alone, they have a 95% chance to win the division per NYT math. Conversely, a loss there by itself drops their odds to 40%. As long as the Bucs beat the Panthers, any other combination of a single Bucs win or a single Falcons loss in the next four weeks clinches the NFC South for Tampa Bay.
The Bucs, in theory, can clinch the division with two weeks left, before they face the Panthers, as long as they win their next two and the Panthers and Falcons lose their next two. At that point, nobody can catch the Bucs, even if they lose their last two games to finish 8-9.
Sunday’s loss to the 49ers also means Tampa Bay is almost locked in as the No. 4 seed if they win the NFC South, which would mean opening the playoffs against the Cowboys (10-3) as the NFC’s top wild card. The Bucs beat the Cowboys 19-3 on the road in Week 1, but that would be a formidable challenge to open the playoffs, and they could face the likely top-seeded Eagles in the following round. Considering they have a losing record, most Bucs fans are happy to get into the playoffs and long past fretting who they’re facing once they’re in.
Related: NFL Playoff Picture: Which teams are in, who’s still in the hunt
Panthers (5-8)
Like Tampa Bay, Carolina knows it will win the NFC South with a sweep of their remaining four games, a surprising position to be in considering they were 2-7 just four weeks ago. They’ve surged under interim coach Steve Wilks and are just a game back of first place, the only team with any positive momentum entering the final four games.
Carolina and Atlanta have the same record and split their regular-season series, but the Panthers have the tiebreaker edge on a better division record right now, so they have a simpler path to winning the division. The last two games are against teams they’ve already beaten this season, the next is at home against a Steelers team that might be without their starting quarterback, so the biggest obstacle might be on Christmas Eve against the surging Lions, who have won five of six and are in contention for a wild card.
Panthers rush for 223 yards to beat the Seahawks 30-24
The Carolina Panthers pick off Geno Smith twice and rush for 223 yards to beat the Seattle Seahawks in Week 14.
The most optimistic way to explain the Panthers is this: If Carolina wins the next two and the Bucs lose either of their next two, then the Panthers can all but clinch the NFC South by beating the Bucs on New Year’s Day in Week 17. And if the Falcons lose to the Ravens in Week 16, Carolina can clinch the division title outright then and there in Tampa, even if they lose the finale vs. Saints.
Falcons (5-8)
Atlanta could lose its next two games, be 5-10 and still be alive for the NFC South title. They’d need an incredible amount of help: the Bucs and Panthers would need to lose their next two, the Saints would have to lose in Week 16, and in that case, the Falcons are still alive and can win the division at 7-10. A much better strategy: Not losing the next two games.
More realistic? They just need to stay alive until Week 18, setting up their home game with Tampa Bay as an NFC South championship game. They can’t win a tiebreaker over the Bucs or Panthers, so they need to win one more than the Bucs do in the next three weeks, and one more than the Panthers do the rest of the way.
There are plenty of scenarios where the division comes down to Jan. 8, and the NFL would definitely put Bucs-Falcons and Panthers-Saints in the same window, where the two games play out simultaneously and multiple teams — perhaps all four — would enter the day with a chance to win the division.
Saints (4-9)
The wildest finish? All four NFC South teams enter the final weekend at 7-9, and if the Saints and Falcons both win their finales in that scenario, New Orleans wins the division on a head-to-head sweep of Atlanta, so they’d go from 4-9 to making the playoffs, the first team in NFL history ever to do so.
In last place right now, the Saints need the most help of the NFC South teams to win the division, but it doesn’t even have to start with them winning out. As long as New Orleans wins at home against Atlanta on Sunday and the Bucs lose to the Bengals, the Saints could even lose at the Browns on Christmas Eve and still be alive to win the division.
If the Saints win out and the Bucs lose three of their last four — this is just the simplest hypothetical — then the only other thing the Saints need to win the South at 8-9 is another Panthers loss, in any of the next three games.
Dizzy yet? We’ll come back and update this each week. The number of scenarios and teams still alive should go down each week, but the division has only seemed to pull closer and closer in the past month, so we’ll see.
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Greg Auman is FOX Sports’ NFC South reporter, covering the Buccaneers, Falcons, Panthers and Saints. He is in his 10th season covering the Bucs and the NFL full-time, having spent time at the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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