[snackdaddy]

[actionjack]

I want No. 3 too!

And just like last time - I do not want to play the Lions until it's totally unavoidable.


For now though - beat the Cards!!

I"ll take the beat up Detroit team in the second round. The team we dont match well with is Philly (with Hurts). There line play is better then both of ours lines, and they have Saquon.

[Elvis]

Phili in Phili is the worst possible matchup.

But we have to make the playoffs first. We're in a very strong position but it's a done deal yet...

[PARAM]

Phili in Phili is the worst possible matchup.

But we have to make the playoffs first. We're in a very strong position but it's a done deal yet...

I'm with you there. I'm not worried about matchups, no matter the round. Just get in; find out who your opponent is; and game plan accordingly. It's the NFL. There is no "easy" path to take.

[Elvis]

I'm with you there. I'm not worried about matchups, no matter the round. Just get in; find out who your opponent is; and game plan accordingly. It's the NFL. There is no "easy" path to take.

I'm clearly playing both sides of the fence. I like gaming out the possibilities and scenarios but i also don't want to get ahead of myself...

[AltiTude Ram]

[AltiTude Ram]

Here's the picture.

[Elvis]

Thinking this through a little more:

Raiders play Saints next week. So unless it's a tie, Rams pickup 1 SOV point from that game no matter what which is why it's not on the graphic for week 17 and why the Rams are effectively up 5, not 4.

Rams potential pickups are (tonight and week 17):
NO>GB tonight
MN>GB
Buff>Jets

Seattle:
Den>Cin
MIA>CLE
ATL>WAS

So i think if 5 of these go the Rams way, it's over (SOV wise) before week 18. Otherwise it's not. Which means, most likely SOV will not be settled before week 18.

Of course all of this assumes Rams beat AZ and Seattle beats Chicago.

[max]

I tried to distill this down to the essential discriminators. (But it still goes on way too long.)

This analysis only addresses the situation where: a) we beat AZ and Sea beats CHI.
b) SEA beats us in the final game. And c) GB beats NO tonight. ( I will update if NO upsets GB).

This is because I’m only addressing the situation where the Rams and SEA both finish 10-7 and SoV comes into play.

It is only necessary to count the wins of opponents that don’t cancel out due to the Rams and SEA both winning or losing to them. I am calling these critical wins.

Therefore, SEA has 35 opponent critical wins and the Rams have 39 opponent critical wins. I think most people have recognized that we are 4 critical opponent wins better than SEA.

My chart below hopefully shows how I got to these numbers without too much confusion.

The next point here is to understand what can happen after week 17 if we beat AZ and SEA beats Chicago. At that point SEA can potentially add 3 critical wins from Den, Miami, and Atlanta. And the Rams can add 5 critical wins from SF, LV, Minn, NO, and Buffalo.

Worst case situation is SEA picks up 3 critical wins and we get zero. Then we go into the final week only 1 critical win ahead of SEA.

If all this bad stuff happens in week 17 (which is highly unlikely), then anything can happen meaning we can potentially lose the SoV tiebreaker or breakeven on it and lose the Strength of Schedule tiebreaker.

The big takeaway for me is as long as we maintain our 4 critical opponent win going into week 18 then we clinch the division as SEA can’t catch us on SoV.

[Elvis]

Nice work max. See my post(s) and others above.

New Orleans plays LV week 17, so unless they tie, that's another point for us.

Seattle can potentially pickup 5 points week 18 and they could also potentially win the next tiebreaker so i think we'd need to be ahead by 6, not 4, going into week 18 for it to be a lock...