The Minnesota Vikings’ win against the Chicago Bears on Monday night and the Detroit Lions’ loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday gave the Vikings a path to the 1-seed in the NFC. The 1-seed is vital because it guarantees the team home-field advantage until the Super Bowl. It also gives the team a bye, which is functionally a free win against the league’s best teams on top of an additional week of rest after a grueling 17-game season.
Magic 8 ball? Try again later
When referencing playoff seeding, analysts often talk about teams that “control their own destiny.” That means if a team wins the rest of its games, they are guaranteed to earn that spot.
The Vikings control their own destiny for the NFC North title. Winning their last three games would put them at 15-2, and beating the Lions in Week 18 to cap Detroit’s potential record at 14-3. However, they don’t control their own destiny for the No. 1 seed in the NFC because the Philadelphia Eagles could also win out and end up at 15-2
(Note: This article assumes the Vikings and Eagles finish 15-2 for most of the calculations. There is a world where both teams could finish 14-3, or even 13-4, and still go through this tiebreaker, but that is unlikely given the strength of the Lions and the fact that the Eagles have a weak remaining schedule.)
However, Philadelphia doesn’t control its own destiny, either. When teams have the same record, the NFL uses a series of tie-breakers to determine seeding. The tiebreaker for the Vikings and Eagles is currently strength of victory, which will not be finalized until each team plays its last game. We can project it, but so many games impact strength of victory that we will not know which team has the advantage until Week 18.
NFL Tiebreakers
The NFL lists tiebreakers on its website and has two different sets, one for ties within a division and one for ties outside the division. (Note: The site says the second set is for “Wild Card clubs,” but it also applies to seeding for division-winners.) If the Vikings and Eagles finish at 15-2, the second set will apply to them.
Those tiebreakers are, in order:
- Head-to-head, if applicable.
- Best won-lost-tied percentage in games played within the conference.
- Best won-lost-tied percentage in common games, minimum of four.
- Strength of victory in all games.
Head-to-head is not applicable since the Vikings and Eagles have not played. Assuming both teams win out, the Vikings and Eagles will be 10-2 in conference, so their conference record will be tied. For common opponents, the 15-2 Vikings and Eagles would be 5-1 against the Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Los Angeles Rams, so that’s also tied.
What is strength of victory?
For the Vikings, their strength of victory is the average winning percentage of the opponents they have defeated. You can calculate this by adding up the winning percentage of all the teams they’ve beaten (.714 for the Packers, .143 for the Giants, .214 for the Jaguars, etc.) and dividing that number by the total number of wins. That gets convoluted pretty quickly, and you’ll immediately need a calculator.
However, mathematically, adding up winning percentages is the same as adding up all the wins and losses a team has, then calculating the percentage based on that number. On top of that, because each team plays the same number of games (17), the number of total games for 15 opponents is the same. That means you only need to calculate the total number of wins each defeated opponent has to figure out which team is ahead in strength of victory.
A bit of other minutiae:
- Tie counts as half wins. If a game ends in a tie, simply add .5 wins for each team
- If you beat a team twice, they count double in the formula.
Here’s a list of the 15 teams the Vikings and Eagles will have beaten and their current total number of wins:
As you can see, the Vikings currently have a four-game advantage over the Eagles, but that advantage is perilous. That total will change week by week. I looked at the schedule to determine how each game impacts the SoV tiebreaker.
Who is likely to win strength of victory?
You may have noticed that some teams will get cancelled out from the list above. Any Jaguars win adds to Minnesota and Philadelphia’s totals, so they have no impact. The Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens play in Week 16, so either team winning will add to the Eagles’ total. However, neither will add to the Vikings, so Philadelphia is guaranteed to gain one win on Minnesota in that game.
In-division teams are a unique case. The Vikings will have two wins against Green Bay, but the Eagles also beat them. Every Packers win will add two to Minnesota’s total but one to Philadelphia’s, so the upside of Green Bay winning is limited. In the Week 18 Packers-Bears game, the Bears are the preferred outcome because they would add two wins to the Vikings’ total and none to the Eagles’.
There are a couple of different ways to slice the future. Some games, like the Steelers-Ravens example above, are guaranteed to benefit one team over the other. The Vikings have seven such games benefiting them, while the Eagles have five (but one of those games, Cowboys-Commanders, will double-count for six total wins). Functionally, that puts the Vikings at a plus-five win advantage as things currently stand.
You can also try to predict the future. The best way to do this is probably with betting lines. I assigned wins to this week’s moneyline favorites, then used Ben Baldwin’s power rankings based on the spread to predict future games. In that future, the Vikings also gained one win on the Eagles, for a plus-five margin in strength of victory.
All of that could easily flip. If the Carolina Panthers beat the Arizona Cardinals, the Giants beat the Atlanta Falcons, and the New Orleans Saints beat the Packers, with all other outcomes remaining the same, the Eagles suddenly have the lead in SoV. Therefore, I developed a rooting guide for each game based on the preferred outcome and the “leverage,” or difference in win gain for the Vikings or Eagles, based on which team wins or loses.
your comprehensive rooting guide
There are 48 games left in the season. Obviously, as a fan, you’re rooting for the Vikings in their three remaining games. If Philadelphia loses, this tiebreaker suddenly doesn’t matter, so you’re also rooting against the Eagles in their three games.
Beyond that, 16 games don’t impact strength of victory for either team. These are teams that neither the Vikings nor Eagles have played, or games like Steelers-Ravens, where one team is guaranteed a certain gain. That leaves 26 games where you now have a rooting interest because one of the teams can help the Vikings!
Here’s who you should be rooting for:
Immediately, the Week 17 Falcons-Commanders game stands out as the most important game on the schedule. If the Commanders win, the Eagles will pick up two wins, while the Vikings will pick up one win if the Falcons win, leading to a leverage of three.
All of the Falcons games are important. Former Vikings’ QB Kirk Cousins could help the Vikings gain seven wins over the Eagles in strength of victory by winning out … if Atlanta hadn’t benched him for rookie Michael Penix Jr.
Other teams that can help the Vikings by winning are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Cardinals (games have a total leverage of four), and the Houston Texans, New York Jets, Indianapolis Colts, and Bears (games have a total leverage of three). Each of those teams winning would give the Vikings a stranglehold on strength of victory over the Eagles, while consistent losses for those teams would crater the Vikings’ chances at the No. 1 seed.
If strength of victory is tied, who wins strength of schedule, the next tiebreaker? It’s actually the Vikings. Because the Vikings have lost to the 12-2 Lions and 8-6 Rams, while the Eagles have lost to the 8-6 Bucs and 7-7 Falcons, the Bucs and Falcons winning enough games to overtake the Lions and Rams in terms of combined record would give the Vikings an insurmountable lead in strength of victory.
