With only three weeks left in the season, the path to homefield advantage throughout the playoff should be simple. There aren’t many games that should throw a wrench into the works and if the Vikings win out, they should be able to control their destiny to a first-round bye.
But even as the current second seed, the Vikings haven’t technically secured a playoff spot, much less a week off in the postseason.
Analytics website fivethirtyeight gives the Vikings a greater than 99 percent chance of making the playoffs, so it’s not as if there’s a huge risk of Minnesota missing the big dance. If the Vikings win any of their next three games, they’ll be in the postseason.
If the Vikings lose…
If they don’t win any games, Vikings fans might be tempted to watch the other divisional games to root for their rivals to lose. It makes sense; in a world where either the Detroit Lions or the Green Bay Packers run the table — they play each other in Week 17, so they cannot both win out — the Vikings could be eliminated.
That scenario would involve a branching series of events that could involve three 11-5 teams in the NFC South, or a number of second- or third-order tiebreakers.
A run from a divisional opponent is probably not the most likely scenario, however, for the Vikings to miss the playoffs. That instead involves the Carolina Panthers matching the Vikings record. That means it could be better for Vikings fans to see a Packers victory this weekend.
That wouldn’t be enough — the Panthers would only have to win one of their two other remaining games — but it would help in an unlikely three-loss scenario for Minnesota.
That said, a Panthers win this weekend would be fine for Minnesota if they kept on winning. If the Panthers went 11-5, it would force a 10-6 tiebreaker against a team like the Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints, Dallas Cowboys, Seattle Seahawks or Los Angeles Rams.
The Vikings have head-to-head tiebreakers against the Rams, Falcons and Saints, but head-to-head tiebreakers can only break a three-way tie if one team has swept the other two teams in the tiebreaker. So in the scenario where the Rams, Falcons and/or Saints do not win a division title and also go 10-6, the Vikings would place ahead of them.
But if another team joins that party — like Seattle instead of Los Angeles, or Carolina instead of Atlanta — then “common games” is the primary tiebreaker. Because that tiebreaker requires four games among common opponents, it’s not easily activated.
It’s certainly possible. In the infinitesimally unlikely scenario that the Vikings are in a three-way tie with the Cowboys and the Saints for a final wild card spot then the “common games” tiebreaker is used before the conference record one is (which is a relief, given that they all could have the same conference record).
The Vikings record in those games would be 4-1 while the Saints would either be 4-2 or 3-3. The Cowboys would be 2-3. The Vikings would make the playoffs as the final wild-card team.
If common games aren’t used, then conference record is the next tiebreaker. In that scenario, the Vikings would have to put its — presumably, in this scenario — 8-4 conference record against the conference record of the other teams.
Their competitors would be Dallas (who would have an 8-4 conference record in this scenario), Carolina (who would have a 6-6 record at best), Seattle (9-3 in this scenario), Atlanta (9-3) and New Orleans (7-5 or 8-4).
This tiebreaker requires that each team play four games against opponents that the other two teams have also played. Miraculously, all three have played against Washington, Los Angeles, Green Bay and Atlanta.
All that means is that if the Vikings lose, Vikings fans should, therefore, cheer for the following teams to win:
- The Oakland Raiders over the Dallas Cowboys
- The New York Jets over the New Orleans Saints
- The Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the Atlanta Falcons
- The Los Angeles Rams over the Seattle Seahawks
The Green Bay Packers matchup against the Carolina Panthers will be meaningful in a 10-6 Vikings scenario, but it’s difficult to tell how exactly. If the Packers beat the Panthers, it could put Carolina on the path to being the lone 10-6 team to challenge the Vikings for a wild-card spot.
On the other hand, a Panthers team that beats the Packers would have an advantage in a three-way tiebreaker that involves common games. This game is more ambiguous, so Vikings fans can cheer however they would prefer.
As it is, it won’t be difficult for Vikings fans to cheer against the Cowboys, Saints, Falcons or Seahawks.
If the Vikings win this weekend against the Bengals, they secure a playoff spot and they avoid all this confusion.
To secure a first-round bye…
Minnesota will want to make sure there are as many 10- and nine-win teams as possible. That makes a cheering guide relatively easy. There are three teams with 9-4 records, so it would be best for all of them to lose. That means, if the Vikings win, they will want the following teams to also win:
- The New York Jets over the New Orleans
- The Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the Atlanta
- The Seattle Seahawks over the Los Angeles
- The Green Bay Packers over the Carolina Panthers
Unlike in a scenario where they lose against the Bengals, this scenario dictates that Vikings fans would prefer Seattle over Los Angeles. That’s not absolute — there is one case where it would be disadvantageous for the Seahawks to win against Los Angeles, and it could result in the Seahawks earning the top seed.
If Seattle wins out and the Eagles lose out, the Seahawks could secure home-field advantage through the postseason. Even if other teams go 11-5, the tiebreaker rules specify that if only two teams are tied after going through a few of the three-team tiebreakers, that they restart the process using the two-team tiebreaker rules.
Because the Seahawks and Eagles have a much better conference record than the Saints, Rams, Panthers and Falcons in this scenario, they would be tied with the Eagles through the first four tiebreakers, but no other team. The Seahawks won their head-to-head matchup against Philadelphia, so they would be the top seed.
That also means that if the Vikings and the Seahawks were both 11-5, the Vikings would need to have their two wins come against the Bears and Packers — winning against the Bengals and losing to a conference team would give the Seahawks and Eagles the conference tiebreaker advantage.
But if the Vikings lose to the Bengals and then follow that up to beat their division rivals, the fifth tiebreaker, strength of victory, is used. The Vikings would be the top seed using that metric.
One uncomfortable detail to the first-round bye scenario involves the Green Bay Packers. Cheering for a Packers win over the Carolina Panthers makes sense, as Carolina is the biggest threat to a Vikings first-round bye.
A Packers win guarantees that the Panthers cannot go 12-4 and edge the Vikings out of a playoff spot if the Vikings also go 12-4. It’s a difficult pill to swallow for many Vikings fans, but if the bye is that important, the Packers winning this weekend would be best for Minnesota.
The Buccaneers-Falcons game isn’t very important to Minnesota’s first-round bye chances; it only comes into play if the Vikings lose out and the Falcons win out — and even then, only if the Vikings lose out while the rest of the NFC North simultaneously fails to produce another team with a 10-6 record.
For the top seed…
This isn’t difficult. The Philadelphia Eagles are ahead of the Vikings in the seeding by virtue of having won one more game. If the Vikings win this game and the Eagles lose against the Giants, the Eagles will hold on to the top seed in the playoffs in the short term because of conference record.
If the teams finish with the same record by the end of the season, the Eagles will still have the first seed because the Vikings lost to the Panthers while the Eagles beat them. The other common opponents are Washington (both teams are undefeated), the Los Angeles Rams (undefeated) and the Bears (the Eagles are undefeated and the Vikings have one more game to play).
Because the Eagles are perfect against common opponents and the Vikings are not, the Vikings cannot overcome this tiebreaker.
The scenarios for a Vikings top seed are many, but all of them require the Eagles to have one less win than the Vikings. Four teams could go 11-5 and the Eagles would still have a better seed than the Vikings because of conference record.
All of that means that if the Vikings want to have the top seed, they will need to win two more games than the Eagles do in the final three weeks. If those scenarios happen, there are a scant few teams that can match the Vikings record.
In one scenario, the Vikings go 12-4 and the Eagles go 11-5. The Saints, Panthers and Rams can also all go 12-4. As has already been covered, a two-way tiebreaker with the Panthers would mean losing the top seed, but any three-way tiebreaker involving the Panthers would benefit the Vikings because of conference record.
No NFC teams besides the Vikings and Eagles can go 13-3, so if the Vikings win the rest of their games, they do not have to worry about the other conference contenders, which simplifies the field.
So, for the first seed, Vikings fans are left cheering for:
- The New York Giants over the Philadelphia Eagles
- The Green Bay Packers over the Carolina Panthers
That’s it. The Vikings have to get to 12-4 to have any shot of winning the top seed in the playoffs, and no other team besides the Eagles and the Panthers within spitting distance of 12-4 can break a tie with the Vikings.
All in all…
There are some conflicting “rooting guides” here, but winning this game against the Bengals and securing a playoff spot is much more likely than anything else.
Vikings fans can reasonably boil down their cheering preferences in the following order:
- The New York Giants over the Philadelphia Eagles
- The Green Bay Packers over the Carolina Panthers
- The Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the Atlanta Falcons
- The New York Jets over the New Orleans Saints
- The Seattle Seahawks over the Los Angeles Rams
- The Oakland Raiders over the Dallas Cowboys
No matter what, it should be fun.
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