Fourteen teams have been eliminated from playoff contention. Four more eventually will be bounced. And one of four very good teams in the NFC is destined to be among them.<\/p>\n
Even after winning last night in overtime to extend their record to 11-4, the Bears are not in. Which means they could still be out.<\/p>\n
Likewise, the 49ers, Packers, and Lions have yet to qualify. Among Chicago, San Francisco, Green Bay, and Detroit, one of them will not make it.<\/p>\n
The 49ers, if they win out, will be the No. 1 seed in the NFC. If they lose to the Colts, Bears, and Seahawks, the Niners could be SOL.<\/p>\n
The Bears, currently the No. 2 seed, could slip and slide right out of the seven-team field if they close the season with losses to the 49ers and Lions.<\/p>\n
The Packers, at 9-5-1, face the Ravens and the Vikings, who already have played spoiler for the Cowboys \u2014 and who would love to poke a fatal hole in the Cheeseheads\u2019 playoff chances.<\/p>\n
The Lions, who are as good as anyone when things are clicking, have lost three times as many games as they did in 2024. At 8-6, they take a very small margin for error into games against the Steelers, Vikings, and Bears.<\/p>\n
This feels like one of those years in which nearly any team that gets a seat at the playoff table could run the table. It\u2019s possible that an NFC team that otherwise would have gotten red-hot in January will slip up just enough to not get that opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fourteen teams have been eliminated from playoff contention. Four more eventually will be bounced. And one of four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-362388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}