Considering the Detroit Lions’ playoff position, their path to the playoffs seems pretty straightforward. With a recent three-way tie between the Lions, Seahawks and Packers for last spot at 8-8, the Lions simply need to beat the Packers and lose the Seahawks or tie against the Rams to finish with a better record than the two other teams.
If you’re a smartypants, you could throw in a second scenario where the Lions and Packers are tied and the Seahawks lose. That way, Detroit would finish ahead of Seattle and hold the tiebreaker over the Packers due to their previous win over them.
But if you want to run through the whole galaxy brain in Lions playoff scenarios, there’s another crazy postseason route for Detroit. It’s insane, there’s an almost zero percent chance it’ll actually happen, and it’s affecting a team – the Washington Commanders – who are already out of the playoffs.
The following should happen:
- Lions tie the packers
- Seahawks tie up the Rams
- Commanders beat the cowboys
In this case, the wild card score for that last place would be as follows:
- Lions: 8-8-1
- Packers: 8-8-1
- Seahawks: 8-8-1
- Commanders: 8-8-1
Yes, a four-way tie for last place in the playoffs. So who’s coming in? Let’s take a closer look at the NFL playoff tiebreak rules.
Whenever there is a tie between more than two teams for a wild card spot, a tiebreak must be conducted to ensure only one team per division is represented. The Lions and the Packers are the only two teams from the same division and the Lions would have the head-to-head tiebreaker from their earlier win over them. Packer: off.
And then there were three more: Lions, Seahawks and Commanders.
Let’s use the exact tiebreaking procedure from the NFL website:
- The Seahawks beat the Lions, but they didn’t play the Commanders, so that’s not true.
- The Lions played both the Commanders and Seahawks but split that series so that’s not true.
- The Commanders lost to the Lions but didn’t play the Seahawks, so that’s not true.
For the second tie-break:
2. Best win-loss-tie percentage in games played within the conference.
- If the Lions are tied, they are 6-5-1 in the conference
- If the Seahawks are tied, they are 5-6-1 in the conference
- If the Commanders win, they are 5-6-1 in the conference
BOOM, Lions are in the playoffs.
Of course, all of this would require two unlikely draws, and a Commander – currently a 5.5-point underdog with nothing to play – wins the Cowboys. But what’s wrong with dreaming a little?
hat tip too Twitter user Ben Ingersoll for pointing out this scenario.