The Buccaneers are favored to win Saturday\u2019s big NFC South showdown. Unfortunately for them, that\u2019s not enough to win the division.<\/p>\n
The Panthers are the betting favorites to win the NFC South, thanks to their path to winning the division via a three-way tied with the Buccaneers and Falcons.<\/p>\n
Current betting odds have the Bucs as 2.5-point favorites to win at Tampa Bay on Saturday. That would leave the Bucs and Panthers tied at 8-9 atop the NFC South, and for the time being put the Buccaneers ahead of the Panthers via the division record tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
But to win the NFC South, the Buccaneers need to win a two-team tiebreaker with the Panthers. If the Falcons beat the Saints on Sunday, the Falcons will also be 8-9, and in a three-way tiebreaker, the Panthers will win the division because the Panthers have the best record in games among all three teams.<\/p>\n
The Falcons are three-point favorites to beat the Saints on Sunday, and that would be enough to hand the division to the Panthers regardless of what happens in Saturday\u2019s Panthers-Buccaneers game. The current betting odds have the Panthers as -400 favorites to win the NFC South, and the Buccaneers as +310 underdogs.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the Panthers control their own path to the playoffs: Win and they\u2019re the division champions. The Buccaneers need two things to happen: They need to win and they need help from the Saints beating the Falcons. And the odds are against that happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buccaneers are favored to win Saturday\u2019s big NFC South showdown. Unfortunately for them, that\u2019s not enough to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-379801","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\/379801","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=379801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}