Contenders and Pretenders - Predictions who is getting into the Playoffs

[Brit Pack]

I just looked through the NFC playoff hunt contenders schedules to run some predictions. Well as best guess as you can with the ‘any given Sunday’ element to the NFL.

I reckon Saints and Rams have a got a very good chance of winning their divisions.

I think Vikes will take the North and the Skins will take the East.

That means two spots open and our biggest threats are the Bears, Hawks, and Lions. Philly, Dallas, Tampa and the Falcons are in with a shout as well but based on current record and remaining games I feel they will be less of a threat. Panthers are interesting as well, being already at 4-2 helps.

The Seahawks currently 3-3 have some very winnable games against the Niners twice and the Cards. They do play tough games against the Chiefs, and the Rams away. The rest of the teams they play are good and much harder to predict – Packers, Lions, Panthers, Chargers and Vikes.

Chicago has the easiest remaining schedule I see in terms of really winnable games. They play the Jets, Bills, Giants and Niners (the last three mentioned are away games). Toughest game is the Rams, which they play at home and the rest are divisional games, playing us and both the Vikes and Bears twice.

The Lions have a similar set up to Chicago where they also have 5 divisional games left and they play the Rams at home. They have two very winnable games away at the Bills and Cards.

The Panthers have a lot of games which could really go either way. The easiest are Browns away and Bucs at home. They play the Steelers, Ravens, Seahawks, Saints twice and Falcons. I hope that is too much for them to take on.

Quite an obvious point though is that we need to beat the Bear, Lions and Hawks. Those for me are the three pivotal games remaining on our schedule. It helps that the Lions and Bears have so many divisional games remaining.