The Dallas Cowboys won last night’s game because someone had to. It wasn’t pretty. It summed up the football season in the NFC EAST, where now every team has a losing record with just four weeks to go, and they are all within a game of each other.
This weekend could not have gone better for the Philadelphia Eagles, who pulled a big upset in New England and also got home losses from both New York and Washington that swung the odds, for now, in the Eagles favor. Before getting into those odds, let’s first take a look at the remaining schedules for each team. After all, we like to rubberneck, and this is a glorious pileup, if you don’t spend too much time watching it.
Philadelphia has the best remaining schedule considering they get three home games before the Giants finale. The Giants have to go to both Miami and Minnesota, sandwiched around a game against currently 12-0 Carolina. Washington has a manageable schedule, but three of the remaining games are on the road. Dallas has a pretty rough stretch, and will be a big underdog, with games against Green Bay and the two AFC East wildcard contenders.
I ran simulations of all the remaining games by estimating the point spreads using a variety of power rankings, getting the game probabilities from those estimated lines. I then applied the tiebreaker rules, and got the following:
Philadelphia: 41%
Washington: 30%
NY Giants: 27%
Dallas: 2%
I’ll note that for simplicity, I did not include the possibility of ties in those simulations, but it will do for our purposes of just getting a since of the rough chances of each team. In 41% of the simulations, (at least) one team got to 8+ wins, so the odds are slightly more than half that we will have a team with a losing record win the division.
The Giants are actually my highest power-rated team of the foursome (they are the only one with a positive point differential thanks to the close losses), and they also have the most average wins of the group (6.9 wins on average across all simulations). The Eagles and Washington are very similarly power-rated.
Why then is New York only 3rd when it comes to playoff odds? The tiebreakers do not favor them, while the Eagles have the advantage in a tiebreaker that you may have forgotten is key.
The Giants are 2-3 in the division. The best they can hope for, with a win over Philadelphia, is a 3-3 record, and going to the next divisional tiebreaker: common games. There are plenty of simulations where the Giants beat the Eagles, but can still lose out on a tiebreaker with Washington if they win at Dallas, or even still lose out to the Eagles at 7-9 by going to the next tiebreaker, if the Eagles beat Washington.
The Eagles currently have the advantage because of that common games tiebreaker. I know the Detroit loss on Thanksgiving was a disaster of epic proportions, but it is actually the least deadly loss on the schedule. That’s because the games against the NFC North and West are not common. Philadelphia is 5-6 in games that will be common games, while the Giants (beat SF), Washington (beat STL) and Dallas are all 4-7. Throw in that the toughest game for Philadelphia is Arizona at home (also a non-common game) and they are in good shape in a lot of tied situations, and win more than their fair share of 7-9 tiebreakers. Oddly, beating Buffalo at home is more important than the Arizona game.
Dallas, meanwhile, is way down there at 2%. I know last night provided hope, but Dallas really only has one thing–the 3-2 division record–going for them. They are already a game back of three teams, and play a tough schedule, and are power-rated the lowest with Cassel at QB. In plenty of the scenarios, they were 5-10 or 4-11 entering the last week with no chance. Go and beat Green Bay on the road in a big upset, and then you can start thinking you have a chance, Cowboys fans.
Giants have tiebreaker issues in many of the simulations.
from The Big Lead http://ift.tt/1XSJGBw
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