You may have seen, or not, that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ path to the playoffs in Week 18 could include them losing Saturday’s game against the Baltimore Ravens and still making the postseason with a 9-8 record. That might sound implausible, but it’s really not, and it wouldn’t take that much in order to happen. Accordingly, I thought it might be useful to actually walk through this scenario to clarify how and why this is possible for anybody who might have questions.
For starters, let’s clearly establish what needs to happen if the Steelers do lose, and what doesn’t make a difference.
What Needs To Happen:
- Jaguars lose to Titans
- Broncos defeat Raiders
- Colts and Texans don’t tie
That’s it. If those three things happen, the Steelers will make the postseason whether they win in Baltimore or not. Winning or losing could determine whether they’re the sixth or seventh seed, but that’s not the point. Now, a list of things that don’t affect whether they make the postseason or not.
What Doesn’t Matter:
- Bengals lose to Browns
- Bills lose to Dolphins
In terms of explanations, let’s get the things that don’t matter but may sound like they might out of the way first. If the Steelers lose, the Bills will finish with a better record no matter what, so they would inevitably be a higher seed. But if the Steelers win and the Bills lose, they could be the sixth seed, so it’s worth mentioning.
As for the Bengals, who are 8-8 and could finish the season with the same 9-8 record as the Steelers if Pittsburgh loses, this is again a simple answer. The Steelers beat the Bengals twice this season, so they have the only tiebreaker that matters in this scenario: head-to-head. Under any scenario for Wild-Card seeding, the divisional tiebreaker comes first, and there can only be a two-way tie in the AFC North because the Browns already have 11 wins and the Ravens have 13.
Now, for the stuff you came here to read. Why each of these results noted above contribute to the Steelers making the postseason.
Jaguars Lose To Titans
The Steelers and Jaguars both have a 9-7 record, and if it were a one-to-one scenario, Jacksonville would advance because it owns a head-to-head tiebreaker by beating them earlier this season. The only way Pittsburgh could advance ahead of Jacksonville would be if the Jaguars are eliminated in a tiebreaking procedure involving three or more teams. And they obviously can’t finish with more wins than the Steelers. The Browns are already locked into the fifth seed, and either the Bills or Dolphins will be the other Wild Card if the Steelers lose.
Broncos Defeat Raiders
Why does this matter? Well, if the Raiders beat the Broncos, then the Jaguars end up the seventh seed because it creates a two-way tiebreaker situation between them and the Steelers, which we’ve already discussed. If the Broncos win, they finish 9-8, the same as the Steelers and Jaguars (and potentially the Bengals and Colts or Texans, but not both as well).
But the Bengals and Colts (or Texans) would be eliminated within divisional tiebreakers, so it would come down to just the Steelers and Jaguars. Then the straight head-to-head tiebreaker applies. And the Steelers lose. So you need 9-8 teams from three divisions to create the three-team Wild-Card tiebreaking procedure. That allows you to navigate around a direct head-to-head matchup.
Colts And Texans Don’t Tie
The Colts and Texans are both 9-7, so the winner would take the division at 10-7 and be irrelevant to the Steelers. The loser would be 9-8 and would be in a two- or three-way tie for a Wild-Card seed, theoretically, but would not make it out of the division because the Jaguars hold the tiebreaker over both.
If they tie, though, then both would be 9-7-1 and thus would have a better record than a 9-8 Steelers team (or a 9-8 Jaguars or Broncos team). The result would be the Colts winning the division and the Texans advancing as a Wild Card.
Why They All Must Happen
Each scenario creates the necessary condition for creating a three-way tie that avoids pitting the Steelers in a one-on-one tiebreaker against a team that beat them. And the Steelers need a three-way tiebreaker because they lost head-to-head to the Jaguars, Colts, and Texans, and there is no scenario in which they could result in a two-way tie with only the Broncos if they lose while having as good a record as all but two other Wild-Card qualifiers.
Why They Win The Tiebreaker
So, now, why do they win the multi-team tiebreaker that is produced between the Steelers, Jaguars, Broncos, and the winner of the Colts-Texans game, as well as potentially the Bengals? The answer is the quality of opponent that they’ve defeated, also known as their strength of victory, thanks to wins over teams like the Baltimore Ravens. And that’s the fifth tiebreaker.
The first tiebreaking procedure is to take care of divisional business so that only one team in each division advances to the second stage for Wild-Card seeding (which starts over after each seed is determined). The Steelers could lose and still finish ahead of the Bengals because they swept Cincinnati and can’t finish with a worse record. The Jaguars swept the Colts and have a better divisional record than the Texans.
After that is a head-to-head-to-head sweep, meaning one team will have had to defeat each of the other teams to advance, or have lost to the other teams to be eliminated. But nobody played everybody, so even though the Steelers lost to the Jaguars, Colts, and Texans, whom are all in the AFC South, neither the Steelers nor Jaguars played the Broncos. In a tiebreaking procedure with more than one team, it doesn’t matter if one team beat one of the other teams unless one team has either defeated or lost to all of the other teams.
Up next is win-loss record in conference games. The Steelers would be 6-6 in the AFC if they lose on Saturday. But so would the Jaguars. And so would the Texans. The Broncos winning would make them 6-6 as well. The Colts? They have a 7-4 conference record. But their problem is they got swept by the Jaguars, so Jacksonville would be the AFC South team to represent the division in any Wild-Card tiebreaker. And with the Steelers, Broncos, and Jaguars all having a 6-6 conference record in this scenario, you have to go to step five.
Strength of victory. There’s the key. The Steelers’ opponents they’ve defeated own a .535 winning percentage, primarily thanks to the 13-3 Ravens. Jacksonville’s strength of victory is .472, Houston’s .444, and Indianapolis’ .431. In the scenario described above, these teams wouldn’t add another win, and the margin between .535 and .472 is too great to be made up in just one week of play if all of the teams Pittsburgh beat lost and all the teams Jacksonville beat won.
The last team is the Broncos, who have a winning percentage of .492, the closest of the group. But they would have to beat the Raiders, who would be 7-10 if they lose, which would be a .411 winning percentage and would have the effect of lowering Denver’s strength of victory. So by helping themselves, they would be hurting themselves in the differentiating tiebreaker.
Summary
To summarize: The Steelers and Jaguars losing, the Broncos winning, and the Colts and Texans not tying result in a three-way tie between the Steelers, Jaguars, and Broncos. Jacksonville would advance as the AFC South representative over either the Colts (due to a season sweep) or Texans (due to a better divisional record), and the Steelers would advance over the Bengals if Cincinnati were to win (due to a season sweep). None of the three would have a head-to-head-to-head advantage because the Broncos played neither the Steelers nor Jaguars, and all would have a 6-6 conference record. But Pittsburgh would finish with the best strength of victory of the bunch, the fifth tiebreaker, and thus would advance as the seventh seed, with either the Bills or Dolphins as the sixth seed, the winner of that game winning the AFC East.
