kleese

And as we’ve seen all year in the NFL, there are absolutely no guarantees for any team on any given week. And yes, Texans are legitimately playing well. My personal feeling/prediction is that that game is not going to go our way even if Jimmy G is out. I sort of “trust” Kyle in that situation to scheme up enough. Even if Houston plays them tough, I think Niners grind it out. Spread is -13 for a reason (again even with QB uncertainty). I feel a bit better about Carolina— division game and I don’t think Panthers are quite as bad as they’ve looked lately. Hoping Darnold plays. They are also having Covid issues— maybe the new five day isolation stuff will help there. But NOLA’s offense is just dreadful now, making no game for them a gimmie at all. Here is what I personally THINK happens: We beat Philly (I truly believe this and I’ll be putting my money where my mouth is on it BTW). I love this spot for us and I REALLY love it as a gambler at +3.5. I also think Buffalo handles Atlanta— perhaps easily. So I think entering the late window Sunday we will have already clinched staying alive. I then think neither the Niners or Saints games go our way— maybe tight, but both SF and NOLA pull it out. Then Packers hang on to beat Vikings Sunday Night. If my predictions come to fruition 100% (probably unlikely), we’d be left with the following week 18 scenario: —Beat Giants —Need Saints to lose in Atl —Need Eagles to lose vs Dallas My “goal” for Sunday would be for either SF or NOLA to also lose. Let’s say SF wins, NOLA loses, then we’d need: —Beat Giants —Need Eagles to lose vs Dallas —Need either Saints to lose in Atl OR Vikings to beat Bears Now let’s say NOLA wins and SF loses, we’d need: —Beat Giants —Need Eagles to lose vs Dallas OR 49ers to lose at Rams. If the Eagles lost and 49ers won, we’d then need either the Saints to lose OR Vikings to win. If it ALL goes our way, Falcons, Saints, Niners, Vikings lose, we’d need: —Beat Giants —Only way we would NOT get in would be in Niners and Eagles both win their games and Vikings lose to Bears. Or something like that 😁

Alright, here we go… the Saints loss tonight really makes it fun if you are a playoff sceneries nerd because now it really doesn’t take crazy gymnastics to get us in. We absolutely need help, but it isn’t the kind of help that requires a series of insane or even unlikely outcomes. I will lay it out as simply as possible: First of all, we cannot get in without 8 wins. A tie is the same as a loss as it relates to us in the playoffs. So we MUST go 2-0 and we will be eliminated with the next loss/tie regardless of everything else. So…in all the discussion moving forward it ASSUMES we win the next two. So I’m not going to continually include that— it has to happen, so just assume it. And where NBC has it wrong is it’s only a 4% chance if you also include our outcomes. If you grant us the things we can control, I’d say our odds of getting in are probably closer to 40% based on what else would need to happen. I look at this in two ways right now: 1. How do we actually make the playoffs? 2. What is needed to stay alive entering week 18? Let’s start with the easier one. What do we need to happen this week to stay alive heading to the Giants game. This is a simple answer. We need ONE of the following three outcomes: Falcons lose in Buffalo Saints lose to Panthers 49ers lose to Texans If ONE of those outcomes occurs, we will be alive entering week 18. Period. So if that’s all you care about for now, you can stop reading. Sticking with this theme, let’s look at the ideal pie-in-the-sky scenario, and then the more realistic scenario. Pie-in-the-sky Falcons, 49ers, Saints, Vikings (at Packers) all lose next week. If that happened we’d enter week 18 with two WC slots still open. We’d need a win over Giants and EITHER a 49ers loss at Rams OR an Eagles loss at Cowboys (not both). Outcomes of other games would not matter. More realistic scenario Falcons lose in Buffalo, 49ers and Saints win, Vikings lose at Packers. This would clinch for 49ers and leave one spot open. Then in week 18 we would need the Eagles to lose to Cowboys AND Saints to lose at Falcons. This is the scenario I am predicting— and it wouldn’t be a terrible one for us. If Dallas beats Arizona this week they guarantee they will be alive for #1 seed entering the Philly game. Atlanta would be eliminated, but it’s a division game, they generally play Saints tough, Saints offense is dreadful, it’s in Atlanta, and there would be no reason for the Falcons to just lay down and not try against a division rival— they’d play it like their Super Bowl. What is unknown to me is let’s say Dallas loses to Cardinals and #1 seed isn’t on table— would they play for seeding or not care? I would think having home field in round 2 would be desirable, but hard to say how they would handle that. One thing seems for sure— unless the Texans beat SF, we are going to need Dallas to beat Philly. Now let’s say the above scenario plays out except the Saints lose. In that case we’d ONLY need the Eagles to lose week 18 with one small twist— we’d either need Atlanta OR Minnesota to actually win so we avoid a three-way tie with Saints and Eagles which is only multi-team tie-breaker we’d lose. This is really it for now. The actual schedule plays out pretty nicely for us. We play the early game next week. Falcons do as well. Obviously if we lose, then we are done and we won’t be wasting any time or energy rooting against others the rest of the way. If our game and the Falcons game go our way then we will be guaranteed to be alive entering week 18 before the late Sunday games even kickoff. We’d then sit back and root against the Niners, Saints, and Vikings. If you REALLY wanted Dallas to be motivated for week 18 then I guess you could root for the Vikings to beat Packers, but then we’d likely need Bears to beat Vikings the next week. Odds seem better with Vikings just taking the loss at Lambeau and taking our chances that Dallas will play it out in Philly.

But in all seriousness, has a team ever gotten annihilated and the fans left happy that they were “flying around” and playing with great effort? This literally happens every time a team get me drilled. Yeah, this is the BMitch schtick. Doc Walker does it too. All we ever need to do is punch someone in the mouth.

Eh, I think TH played hard. He was just awful. David Mayo looked like he was jogging out there. Was he literally taking his big chance in the NFL and not trying hard or is he just horrible and probably shouldn’t be on an NFL for more than a play or two per game? And the issue isn’t just the volume of guys who are out— it’s WHO was out. McKissick, Thomas, Young, Scherff, Jackson, Collins, etc.: literally the best/most talented players on the team. There is a reality here. Let’s say we had most of those guys and the Cowboys didn’t have Parsons, Lamb, Lawrence, etc… game probably looks different. When you give up 42 in a half, criticism is deserved regardless. It was bad last night. I am totally fine with fans handing out failing grades to the staff. They failed for sure. But I don’t think it is fair or accurate to accuse them of not caring or not trying. Sometimes you stink and things snowball and you aren’t sure how to slow it down. Eh, I think TH played hard. He was just awful. David Mayo looked like he was jogging out there. Was he literally taking his big chance in the NFL and not trying hard or is he just horrible and probably shouldn’t be on an NFL for more than a play or two per game? And the issue isn’t just the volume of guys who are out— it’s WHO was out. McKissick, Thomas, Young, Scherff, Jackson, Collins, etc.: literally the best/most talented players on the team. There is a reality here. Let’s say we had most of those guys and the Cowboys didn’t have Parsons, Lamb, Lawrence, etc… game probably looks different. When you give up 42 in a half, criticism is deserved regardless. It was bad last night. I am totally fine with fans handing out failing grades to the staff. They failed for sure. But I don’t think it is fair or accurate to accuse them of not caring or not trying. Sometimes you stink and things snowball and you aren’t sure how to slow it down. Eh, I think TH played hard. He was just awful. David Mayo looked like he was jogging out there. Was he literally taking his big chance in the NFL and not trying hard or is he just horrible and probably shouldn’t be on an NFL for more than a play or two per game? And the issue isn’t just the volume of guys who are out— it’s WHO was out. McKissick, Thomas, Young, Scherff, Jackson, Collins, etc.: literally the best/most talented players on the team. There is a reality here. Let’s say we had most of those guys and the Cowboys didn’t have Parsons, Lamb, Lawrence, etc… game probably looks different. When you give up 42 in a half, criticism is deserved regardless. It was bad last night. I am totally fine with fans handing out failing grades to the staff. They failed for sure. But I don’t think it is fair or accurate to accuse them of not caring or not trying. Sometimes you stink and things snowball and you aren’t sure how to slow it down.

I’ll just say this— I don’t think every time a team gets destroyed it means they didn’t play with effort. Sometimes that might be the case, but not all the time. I’m not sure I felt last night was a case of us not trying hard enough. Felt more to me like a case of reality catching up— the reality of Covid, injuries, short week, traumatic incident, and ALSO lack of talent in areas where they WEREN’T affected by those things. I mean, David Mayo, Milo Eifler, Jeremy Reaves, etc I bet were all trying REALLY hard out there. But maybe that just doesn’t matter. I think our QB plays with pretty good effort— didn’t change the fact that he was horrendous on the field. In two years, I’ve never felt this team didn’t care or didn’t play hard. Last night was probably the first time they had absolutely zero level of competitiveness, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the effort was lacking. I do think the confidence was probably shattered, and sometimes that makes you look bad.

OK, I think we can call this one, so moving on now to the 8-9 scenarios. Thankfully, there aren’t any 7-10 scenarios so we can enter into next week saying definitively it’s a “must win.” Rather than get super specific right now about how we make the playoffs (I’ll do that later in the week) I’ll focus right now on something a bit more simple— what do we need in week 17 in order to still be alive entering week 18? Believe it or not, we don’t need much. The big key is the Dolphins-Saints game tomorrow: If the Saints lose to Miami, then all we need to do is beat the Eagles and we will remain alive entering week 18 regardless of any other outcomes week 17. It’s that simple. If the Saints beat the Dolphins, then we would need some additional help. Considering that game is less than 24 hours away, I’ll just wait and see what happens there. Once it’s over, I’ll update it again. But if you still care to hope, then root for Miami Monday Night.

Well, if we win out, it automatically means Philly has one loss— so they’d then need to lose to either the Giants OR the Cowboys. And is your confidence level high that Minnesota will beat the Rams tomorrow and win in Lambeau next week? Even if we concede the Bears game to them in week 18? The Saints going 1-2 is the biggest stretch there, but they are underdogs Monday Night, starting Ian Book at QB. The odds of us getting in at 8-9 aren’t great. However, it would NOT take some crazy set of miracle scenarios either. So in fact, as of right now, we do not need to win out to make the playoffs. Do our odds nosedive if we lose tomorrow? Yes.

Again, this is not true. As a matter of fact it is impossible for us to be eliminated this weekend.

49ers loss GREATLY increases the chances we will make playoffs IF we go 3-0. The Niners never really factored into our 8-9 possibilities because they would need to lose to Houston next week. But in our 9-8 possibilities, the Saints could even win out now and we’d be in as long as Niners lost to Rams.

Rooting guide for this week: The Obvious: 49ers at Titans: 100% will assume Niners beat Houston next week in SF; so they only factor for us in scenarios where we finish 3-0. But while that’s still a possibility, we are definitely anti-Niners. Dolphins at Saints: This is the biggest one of the week and matters to us in either the 3-0 finish scenario or the 2-1 finish scenario. Saints Covid news today is a pretty big deal. Obviously rooting Miami here. Giants at Eagles: This really isn’t THAT huge for us in the 3-0 scenario— we’d control our destiny with Philly there. But in the 2-1 finish scenarios we need to beat Philly and they need to either lose to NYG or Dallas. No negative here to Philly losing for us. The Less Obvious: Rams at Vikings: So Minnesota is weird as they relate to us. What we REALLY need is for the Vikings to finish with the same amount of wins as we do— which means they need to win exactly one FEWER game than we do the rest of the way. Having them involved in tie-breakers would really help us. If we go 3-0, we WANT them to go 2-1. If we go 2-1, we WANT them to go 1-2. So just sort of depends on your perspective in terms of what you want from them this week. I guess for now I’d lean root against them. Not quite as black and white as you might think though. Lions at Falcons: Much like Vikings, having the Falcons finish with same record as we do would be advantageous. They play at Buffalo next week which seems like a major long shot for them, so I’d say root FOR them this week. Bucs at Panthers/Bears at Seahawks: Panthers and Seahawks can only help us now. Best they can do is win out and finish 8-9. If we wind up in an 8-9 tie-breaker having those teams involved would be good. Root fo mr both of them, albeit pretty long shot that it would matter. The Now You’re Stretching: Browns at Packers: Currently it would behoove us for all the top NFC teams (Pack, Cards, Boys, Rams) to have something to play for through week 18. Green Bay losing here really keeps the door open for all of them in terms of the top seed, home field, etc. Root for a GB loss and for the top of the NFC playoff picture to remain muddled.

Or if we lose on Sunday. No one is gonna want to hear this, but if we lose and other things go our way, we could still find ourselves VERY much alive with two games remaining.

Here’s the deal— I 100% eliminate our potential results when analyzing the scenarios. Because our results are the control in the equation. All that matters to me is what ELSE we would need. Right now, we control going 3-0, so I’m looking at what else we’d need in that scenario. If we lose Sunday night, then I will shift to what we need if we finish 2-0. I actually don’t think there is any scenario where we are eliminated this weekend by the way. Us making the playoffs isn’t very likely at all because us going 3-0 is improbable and even 2-1 might be pushing it. I personally do not think we are going to make the playoffs— although I do kind of think we are going to beat the Eagles. My only point is that IF we do our part, we really don’t need all that much else to fall our way— as a matter of fact, it would probably be pretty bad luck if we went 3-0 and missed out.

The "serious" help isn't really true... win out and either the Niners lose 2 or Saints lose 1 and we are most likely in. The only way we wouldn't be is if we wound up in a 9-8 tie with ONLY the Saints. We would win almost all other multi-team tie-breakers.

One thing to note on this, the Vikings would need to lose to the Rams or Packers but not BOTH. Under this scenario we would need the Vikings to go exactly 1-1.

I wouldn’t fall into the trap of being overly influenced by the most recent thing you’ve seen. As happens almost weekly in the NFL, things don’t translate all that much week to week— especially with the more flawed teams battling for the WC. Niners probably should have lost in Cincy two weeks ago and this past week the Falcons had the ball inside the Niners 10 on multiple occasions and kept blowing it. Not to say the Niners haven’t deserved their recent wins, but point being, margins are small. They could absolutely lose in Tenn and they would likely be underdogs in LA if that game week 18 matters to the Rams. 9 wins for them, not out of the question. And if the Niners end with 9 wins and we win out, then it doesn’t even matter what the Saints do. If the Niners take care of business, then it’s on to NOLA for us— if they win 2/3 (which I’d say is most likely) we’d need to win out and hope someone other than Philly also finishes with 9 wins (Minny being the most likely there). But it’s also not out of the question AT ALL to me that the Saints lose 2/3. Their offense is really bad. Every game will probably be a grind. Dolphins playing well— then they end with two division games. I don’t think NOLA going 1-2 down the stretch is some wild, impossible dream.

So, after playing around with the Playoff Machine, I came up with some stuff that could make heads explode. The short of it is this… I actually think we have a better shot of getting in at 8-9 (if one win is vs Philly) than almost anyone is going to mention. The major key to that is NOLA losing 2/3. Not sure if we’d consider that a “stretch” right now, but I’d say more likely they win 2/3. But anyway, if we go 8-9, beating Philly and NOLA loses 2/3, we’d have a really good shot to get in— we’d need Philly to lose one to Giants or Cowboys— but on thing potentially trending in our favor is that the Rams, Cowboys, Cardinals, Packers, and Bucs have have plenty to play for— and probably will down to the wire. The one thing that kind of messed me up was that it looks like we would not win a tie-breaker if it’s us, NOLA, and Philly. That specific three-way tie appears to be the only multi-team tie-breaker we would not win (regardless of if its at 8-9 or 9-8). In our 3-0 or we don’t go scenarios, the one team to really watch in addition to NOLA is SF. They play at Tenn, Houston, and at Rams. The one in the middle should be an easy W. But the other two are absolutely potential losses. If they were to drop both, and we win out, I am pretty sure we’d be in automatically unless Minnesota were to win out. So, to start your week… here’s a very easy rooting interest game: Thursday Night root for the Titans over 49ers. Can update again after that.

Philly game was a bummer. Bad luck really. Credit Philly for doing what they do quite well, but we were just decimated. Thought we played as tough as could reasonably be expected. Certainly with the injuries and rona, it FEELS over, but it’s not— not at all actually. Do we still control our own destiny? No. Technically, no. But I think, realistically, yes. If we win our final 3 games, I believe it is likely we would make playoffs. Not a lock. But likely. There are ways we could still get in at 8-9, but all of those scenarios are paper thin now and would take some serious gymnastics to get there. So for now, the focus should be on “three in a row or we don’t go.” Best way to look at it is like this— we need to go 3-0; we then need two of these three things: A- Saints to NOT go 3-0 B-49ers to go 1-2 (or 0-3) C-Vikings to NOT go 3-0 Now, the one thing we don’t want is to finish 9-8 and tied with ONLY NOLA. For example, let’s say the Niners win at least two and get the 6 seed. Well if we win out, Saints win 2/3, we’d need SOMEONE else to also finish 9-8. That could be Atl, Min, Phi, etc. I am 99% sure we are going to win ANY multi-team tie-breaker. I’ll work on that later to make sure, but I think that’s right. So, in other words, we pretty much need to go 3-0. But really, I think a more fun/better way to look at it is this: What do we need to do to be ALIVE entering week 18? For that purpose, just win the next two. Would almost certainly find ourselves in the mix heading into final game of year.

Yes, if you go 15-0 on your above predictions, this is what would happen. Odds of that? Quite slim. Odds of us getting in at 9-8 remain VERY good. There are many paths we could take to get in at 9-8; one of those paths would take a hit if the Niners win in Tenn Thursday so that’s one to watch. Minnesota’s win in Chicago further LESSENS our chances to get in at 8-9, but probably INCREASES the chances we get in at 9-8. Remember, we can get in at 9-8 even if NOLA is 9-8 as long as someone else is also 9-8. It also technically keeps us in the 7 seed for now if we win tonight— as a matter of fact, I believe the winner tonight is the current 7 seed.

Prior to last last night I thought we’d have right at a 50/50 shot to get in at 8-9; now I think it’s more like 25%— maybe a tad higher. I don’t think NOLA losing 2/3 is THAT wild of a stretch to put it into “slim” category quite yet. Pretty even match-up for them Monday vs Dolphins. The end with Panthers/Falcons. I don’t think either of those are automatic wins, especially given Saints offense is really dreadful right now. I still think we’d have a punchers chance at 8-9, but it for sure took a hit last night. At this point 3/4 should absolutely be the goal. Odds remain high we’d get in at 9-8.

Even with the Saints win, our chances to get in at 9-8 remain pretty high. It might make it more complicated, but I still think the odds of ONLY us and NOLA being 9-8 in the 7 seed are pretty low— also remember, if the Niners finish 1-2 they’d also be 9-8 (they have one super easy game at home- Texans- and two tough road games— Titans/Rams.

While technically true, I’m still rooting against the Vikings for now.

Not at all. I don’t think it makes a huge difference in our efforts to make the playoffs at 9-8, but their win tonight for sure lowers our chances to get in at 8-9.

Because I didn’t consider the Panthers a threat AND there are situations where having them as part of a tie-breaker could actually HELP us. But mainly because I’d sort of already written them off. I do think, however, I should have included the Seahawks in the “obvious” category. If they beat the Rams, they are very much in the mix.

Rooting guide for the week: The Obvious: Saints at Bucs: Of all the Sunday games, this one is the most obvious for us in terms of need/rooting interest. The Saints remain the one team in the mix that could beat us in a tie-breaker (only likely if the tie was JUST us and them though). Anyway, this is by far their most difficult remaining game, so a loss here would keep them on pace for a finish of 8 or fewer wins. Vikings at Bears: Vikings play Bears twice with Rams and Packers in between. I think 2-2 is leaning positive for Vikings— so a loss to Bears to start it all off would be fantastic. I actually like Chicago in this spot Monday Night, although the are also dealing with rona issues. The Less Obvious: Panthers at Bills: The odds of Carolina going 4-0 are pretty darn slim, so this really is kind of a big nothing burger for me, but we will be rooting FOR the Panthers in coming weeks, so would be best for them to just lose this one to an AFC team. Seahawks at Rams: LA’s win in Arizona the other night more or less sealed the 5 seed for them (at worst) so they can now help us moving forward. Seattle is a lot like Carolina as it concerns us— they really need to go 4-0 in order to factor in, but after Tuesday, they play the Bears and Lions in Seattle— ending with Cards on road in a game that could mean nothing to Zona, so I’d say it would behoove us for the Chickens to get an L here. Falcons at 49ers: We play the Eagles, Niners play Falcons, so that’s four of the teams in the mix going head to head. The rooting angle in this one is all based on your perspective. If you want as many doors to stay open as possible, I’d say root Atlanta. If you’d prefer to concede that 6th spot to SF and instead see another team battling for 7th take a big blow, root for Niners. I think SF is going to roll on Sunday, but I don’t really care what happens— pluses and minuses either way. Unlike last week, we cannot lose and maintain our playoff position. The Eagles automatically pass us and even if everything else went our way, either the Niners would go two games ahead of us, or Atlanta would join the Eagles and Niners with one more win than we have. Conversely, if we win, there actually would be one way for a team to pass us. If we win, the Niners win, Saints win, and Vikings lose, that would leave us at 7-7 with only the Saints also at 7-7– and they’d pass us on the tie-breaker. Again, we’d need a multi-team tie-breaker in order to pass the Saints. So for sure be rooting for the Bucs Sunday. If Saints lose and we win, we will remain in the playoff spot entering next week.

Walk before you run… back to back playoff seasons for first time since 91-92 would be a step in the right direction to say the least— even if we do so at 8-9. And last year we didn’t get destroyed in our playoff game. I wouldn’t consider us a threat to make a deep run, but one game in NFL anything can happen.