Wildcard Watch is intended to overview — with an optimistic slant — the Commanders’ path to the playoffs for the ‘23 season, such as it is. This will be the fourth different time in which I’ve launched this series somewhere in the middle of the season, but Washington has yet to reach the playoffs in any season when I’ve written the articles, so, yes, I understand the long-shot nature of the undertaking. Hope springs eternal...

I intend to publish the Wildcard Watch as a weekly series for as long as Washington has a reasonable chance of earning a playoff spot.

A total of 9 losses on the season by Washington at any point will probably bring the series to an abrupt end.

Until then, I’ll keep my eye on the playoff prize and ignore the 2024 draft for as long as there’s a chance at the postseason.

If you aren’t interested in this kind of article, now would be a good time to return to the front page and look for something less optimistic to read.

The thoughts in this article are my own, and do not represent the views of Hogs Haven, its other writers or its managing editor.

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A week ago, Washington’s hopes for a playoff seeding relied on the Commanders winning 5 of their final 8 games (at a minimum) while hoping for some other teams — like the Joshua Dobbs-led Minnesota Vikings or the Seattle Seahawks — to stumble into several losses in that same stretch. At a glance, even last week, it looked doubtful that everything would break the right way to get Washington into the playoffs, but there was a definable path, even if it seemed shrouded in mist and fog; after all, other teams hovering around .500 would likely lose about half their remaining games, creating opportunities for the burgundy & gold.

Following the win over the Patriots in Week 9, I decided to launch the Wildcard Watch series for 2023 a week or two earlier than I should have if I wanted to avoid any risk of looking stupid. I knew it at the time, but I was counting on the idea that Washington would be able to pick up a win in Seattle followed by another against a Giants teams that has about 40% of its roster on IR, including the starting and backup quarterbacks. There was no guarantee that the good guys would beat Seattle, but, no guts, no glory, right?

As everyone reading this knows already, Washington lost on its road trip to the great northwest, and, as you can see from the tweet below, saw its meager playoff hopes dim to the equivalent of a flickering candle flame in the wind.

It was a close thing, though. Dyami Brown tied the game with a ‘dy(n)amic’ touchdown catch and run on a big-league pass from his former college teammate, Sam Howell, with 52 clicks left on the clock.

All the Commanders needed to do was to prevent the Seahawks from driving 40 or so yards and kicking a field goal. The defense wasn’t able to deliver, and Washington, instead of going to overtime with the chance to achieve a 5-5 record, fell to 4-6.

Amazingly, that loss didn’t drop the Commanders to the bottom of the NFC in terms of win percentage. There are a lot of teams in the conference in even worse shape than Washington.

The key reasons why Washington isn’t out of the playoff picture entirely after losing to the Seahawks are:

1. The Falcons and Packers both lost as well, so neither team gained ground on Washington.
2. The Vikings still have the opportunity to fall apart if Joshua Dobbs can’t continue the magic.
3. Washington has two games against the Cowboys in the remaining 8 weeks. Getting two wins in those games could give the two teams similar records, and would give Washington the tie-breaker advantage against their division rival.

There was some bad news this past week with respect to Washington’s playoff hopes. The Buccaneers moved ahead of Washington in the standings by beating the Titans, and Joshua Dobbs looked like a quarterback who could lead the Vikings to the the playoffs, which would eliminate the Commander’s single best hope of a playoff seeding.

On the other hand, Tampa Bay faces a tough game this week against the 49ers, and the Vikings could be in for a tough day on the road in Denver. If both teams lose while Washington beats the Giants, the Commanders would end the week just a half-game behind the Vikings for the 7th seed.

If the season ended today

If the season ended today, the Commanders would miss the cut. You can see the 4 division winners circled in red (East, North, West, South). The three wildcard teams are circled in blue.

To get into the playoffs, Washington needs to stay ahead of the 3 teams behind them that are ‘still in the hunt’, and — by Week 18 — pass at least two of the four teams in the #5 - #8 positions. (Note: with 8 games left, anything can happen. For example, the Vikings could replace the Lions as the #1 team in the North, but I will discuss the standings as they currently are to avoid the confusion of trying to consider and detail the seemingly infinite possibilities that could play out over the final two months of the season. Since this will be a weekly article, I’ll provide updated commentary as teams rise and fall.)

The loss to the Seahawks this past Sunday was particularly destructive to Washington’s playoff hopes since it not only gave Seattle a 2-game lead in the win column (instead of being tied at 5 wins each), but also gave Seattle the head-to-head tie-breaker and added a loss to Washington’s record against NFC opponents, putting pressure on Washington to finish with a better record than its playoff rivals instead of being able to rely on tie-breaking advantages

The Commanders path to the playoffs

You may have noticed that Hogs Haven contributing writers have been making picks each week all season. Whether it’s been just picking winners or picking against the spread, I’ve generally been able to get more predictions right than wrong. In picking the winning team, I have been right less than 65% of the time this season; picking against the spread, I have a less than a 57% success rate.

In short, I don’t pretend for a moment that I can predict wins & losses for a half-dozen teams over a two-month period, but I think that it’s worth having a model that can be used from week to week to chart a path to the playoffs for the Commanders, as long as such a path reasonably exists.

And that’s what you’ll see below — a model that is designed to show, not how the Commanders will fail to make it, but a model that shows what seems to be a reasonable path to the postseason (note I said ‘reasonable’, not ‘most likely’).

That means that when I predict a win or loss in the chart below, if the game is anything close to a 50-50 call, I will predict the outcome that is most likely to help the Commanders get to the playoffs. So, for example, I’m absolutely predicting that Washington will beat the Rams and Dallas (twice) since those games improve Washington’s record, hurt the records of teams ahead of us, and create tie-breaker advantages in determining playoff seedings. In short, I’m stacking the deck in favor of the Commanders in Scenario A.

Scenario A

I’m stacking the deck here in two ways:

• I am assigning a pair of wins to Washington against Dallas; I have the Commanders winning in Dallas on Thanksgiving and again at home in Week 18.
• I am assuming an epic collapse by the Vikings, who finish the season 2-5 in this model.

Note: I have the Seahawks finishing 3-5 in their final 8 games, but if they have a better record, it won’t change the outcome of this scenario. I have given them a poor record mainly to show the effects of tie-breakers when teams finish with identical records.

Note: The Seahawks and Vikings are interchangeable in this scenario. In other words, if the Seahawks finish 2-6 (which is not out of the question) then the Vikings could go undefeated and Washington would still get a playoff seeding. A 2-win finish to the season by either team gets the Commanders into the postseason under Scenario A.

In this scenario, THREE NFC teams finish with 9-8 records, and would qualify for the 5th, 6th & 7th seeds while the other 5 teams shown here finish with between 5 and 8 wins each and out of the playoffs.

In Scenario A, the Commanders, Seahawks and Cowboys all finish with 9 wins.

To determine the seedings for these three wildcard teams, tie-breaking procedures would be applied.

The first 3-team tie-breaker (Scenario A)

The first tie-breaker is head-to-head competition.

Because the Cowboys beat the Seahawks, Seattle beat Washington, and the Commanders beat Dallas, this tie-breaker does not eliminate any team, and we move to the next 3-team tie-breaker.

The second 3-team tie-breaker (Scenario A)

The second tie-breaker is conference record. In Scenario A, the Commanders & Cowboys each have a 6-6 record against NFC teams while Seattle has a 7-5 record in the conference.

Seattle wins this tie-breaker and becomes the #5 seed.

Washington and Dallas move on to the next tie-breaker.

The first 2-team tie-breaker (Scenario A)

With only two teams left (Cowboys & Commanders), we move to the 2-team tie-breaking criteria, which takes us back to head-to-head competition.

The Cowboys lost to the Commanders both times they played in Scenario A.

Washington wins the tie-breaker and becomes the #6 seed.

Dallas becomes the #7 seed under Scenario A.

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Scenario B

In this scenario, I will change only two outcomes. Instead of the Commanders sweeping Dallas in 2023, Washington will lose to the Cowboys in Week 18, and the Vikings will beat Denver in Week 11 instead of taking a loss.

This changes the playoff seeding entirely.

Dallas finishes as the only 10-win team and is awarded the #5 seed.

Seattle and Minnesota both finish with 9 wins and have to go through the tie-breaking procedure.

The other 5 teams have between 5 and 8 wins and are eliminated from the playoffs.

The first 2-team tie-breaker (Scenario B)

The first tie-breaker for 2 teams is head-to-head competition. .

Because the Seahawks and Vikings did not play each other in 2023, we move to the next tie-breaker and continue until the seedings are determined.

The second 2-team tie breaker (Scenario B)

The second tie-breaker is winning percentage against NFC teams. In this case, the Vikings’ conference record is 8-4 while the Seahawks’ record is 7-5.

The Vikings would be awarded the #6 seed.

The Seahawks would be awarded the #7 seed in Scenario B.

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Summary

I’ve tried to show in Scenario A an achievable path to the playoffs for the Commanders.

In Scenario B, I’ve tried to show how a change in the outcome of just two games can significantly change the teams that qualify and the order of their seeding.

I’ve also tried to illustrate how the tie-breakers work, since they are typically an important part of playoff seeding.

In both models, I have predicted the outcomes of nearly 60 NFL games between now and Week 18. The only thing I know for sure is that those 60 predictions will not all be correct. My purpose in this article and with these projections is not to try to accurately predict the playoff seedings for the NFC, but to focus on identifying a path to the playoffs for the Commanders, and to review the rules for playoff seeding along the way.

Going forward, week by week, as results of games become known and the number of future possibilities diminishes, we can use the model with greater and greater certainty. For now, it is only a model designed to discuss possibilities, and to identify what the Commanders probably need to accomplish to reach the postseason as a wildcard team.

It starts with a win over the Giants on Sunday

With a 4-6 record, Washington cannot lose more than 1 or 2 of its remaining regular season games and still have any hope of making the playoffs.

The situation would have been dramatically better if the Commanders had beaten the Seahawks this past Sunday. At this point, Washington has very little wiggle room. They have to win at least 5 games.

As you can see, it also matters which games are won and lost. When tie-breakers are applied, losses to NFC teams are potentially more damaging than losses to AFC teams, and head-to-head results with other playoff contenders can have a massive effect on seeding.

Washington needs to win in Week 11 because (1) the team needs the “W”, (2) the team needs to bolster its conference record. Another loss to the Giants would not mathematically eliminate the Commanders, but it would certainly bring the curtain down from any practical standpoint.

Glass half-full

The good news is that Ron Rivera’s Washington teams have played well this time of year, with a 9-3 record in the last 12 games that the burgundy & gold have played in November, and the Giants are in disarray, with their top two quarterbacks on injured reserve. They lost to Dallas this past Sunday by a score of 49-17 in a game that wasn’t actually as close as the final score.

Also, a lot of things seem to be coming together offensively for Washington. Sam Howell is playing better every week; the new offensive line combination seems to be playing better than the one that played the first 7 weeks; Eric Bieniemy seems to have hit his stride as a play caller since the debacle in New York, and the Commanders running backs stepped up in a big way against Seattle.

The real problem is that Jack Del Rio’s defense has not played at a consistent high level all season, and now it is without Chase Young or Montez Sweat, who were both traded, and James Smith-Williams, the top remaining DE, left the Seahawks game with an apparently severe hamstring injury.

The Commanders may have limped through some ugly football games in September and October, but with a strong offensive performance against the Eagles in Week 8, a road win against New England in Week 9, and a highly competitive game (but ultimately a loss on a final-play field goal) on the road in Seattle, perhaps the stage is set for a late-mid-season surge behind our second-year quarterback and his young supporting cast.

There are not many people who believe it will happen, but this series of articles is about focusing on the possible, not the probable.

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Week 11 rooting guide for games involving NFC teams

Dallas at Carolina - The Cowboys are 10.5-point road favorites in this game, so a loss here would be a massive shock, but a Cowboys loss would be a big step in the right direction for the Commanders. Root for the Panthers to keep start pounding.

Chicago at Detroit - The Commanders aren’t going to catch the Lions and the Bears aren’t going to catch the Commanders. However, Detroit still has a decent chance to finish as the #1 seed ahead of the Eagles. If Washington can get the 7th seed, they would play their first game on the road against the #2 seed. I can’t think of a division winner that I’d rather face on the road than the Eagles. The added bonus is that each Bears loss likely improves the value of the 2nd round pick that Washington got in trade for Montez Sweat. Root for the Lions.

LA Chargers at Green Bay - cheer for the AFC; the Bolts need to send the cheese heads home with an “L”.

Arizona at Houston - Arizona is no threat to Washington’s playoff hopes; however, on general principle, root AFC over NFC — this week, We are Texans!

Tampa Bay at San Francisco - The Buccaneers are currently in the #8 slot ahead of the Commanders. A win by Washington and a loss by Tampa Bay would see them swap positions again, with the burgundy & gold jumping into the #8 slot with 5 wins versus 4 for the Bucs. Fortunately, both outcomes seem likely. Let’s go Niners!

Seahawks at Rams - Both teams are a threat to Washington’s playoff hopes. Washington is only a half-game ahead of the Rams (they both have 6 losses) so LA could pass the Commanders if they get hot down the stretch. HOWEVER, Washington still plays the Rams, and will have to win that road game if they hope to reach the postseason. If Washington finishes 9-8 with a tie-breaking advantage over the Rams, then LA would have to finish undefeated in its remaining schedule to finish ahead of Washington, which seems very unlikely.

The Seahawks are unlikely to lose enough games to fall to 8-9 on the season, but it is possible. It’s a close call, but I’d say to root for the Rams to pull off a home upset against their division rivals. The Rams actually beat Seattle on the road to open the season, and the latest line has just a 1-point spread for this game. Let’s go Rams!

Vikings at Broncos - Easy call here. AFC over NFC and we are rooting for a Vikings collapse. Let’s Ride!

Eagles at Chiefs - We will always root against the Eagles for any out-of-conference games, but, as mentioned above with respect to the Bears-Lions game, there’s also a decent chance that the Lions (currently 8-2) can finish with the #1 seed, robbing the Eagles of a wildcard round bye, and setting up the potential of a Washington-Philadelphia wildcard round matchup of #7 vs #2. Let’s cheer for Big Red!

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Tie breaking procedures

Here are the NFL’s tie-breaking procedures:

To Break A Tie Within A Division

If, at the end of the regular season, two or more clubs in the same division finish with identical won-lost-tied percentages, the following steps will be taken until a champion is determined.

Two Clubs

• Head-to-head (best won-lost-tied percentage in games between the clubs).
• Best won-lost-tied percentage in games played within the division.
• Best won-lost-tied percentage in common games.
• Best won-lost-tied percentage in games played within the conference.
• Strength of victory in all games.
• Strength of schedule in all games
• Best combined ranking among conference teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best combined ranking among all teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best net points in common games.
• Best net points in all games.
• Best net touchdowns in all games.
• Coin toss

Three or More Clubs

(Note: If two clubs remain tied after one-or-more clubs are eliminated during any step, tiebreaker restarts at Step 1 of two-club format. If three clubs remain tied after a fourth club is eliminated during any step, tiebreaker restarts at Step 1 of three-club format.)

• Head-to-head (best won-lost-tied percentage in games among the clubs).
• Best won-lost-tied percentage in games played within the division.
• Best won-lost-tied percentage in common games.
• Best won-lost-tied percentage in games played within the conference.
• Strength of victory in all games.
• Strength of schedule in all games.
• Best combined ranking among conference teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best combined ranking among all teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best net points in common games.
• Best net points in all games.
• Best net touchdowns in all games.
• Coin toss

To Break A Tie For The Wild-Card Team

If it is necessary to break ties to determine the three Wild-Card clubs from each conference, the following steps will be taken.

- If the tied clubs are from the same division, apply division tiebreaker.

- If the tied clubs are from different divisions, apply the following steps.

Two Clubs

• 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.
• Strength of schedule in all games.
• Best combined ranking among conference teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best combined ranking among all teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best net points in conference games.
• Best net points in all games.
• Best net touchdowns in all games.
• Coin toss.

Three or More Clubs

(Note: If two clubs remain tied after one-or-more clubs are eliminated during any step, tiebreaker restarts at Step 1 of two-club format. If three clubs remain tied after a fourth club is eliminated during any step, tiebreaker restarts at Step 2 of three-club format.)

Apply division tiebreaker to eliminate all but the highest ranked club in each division prior to proceeding to step 2. The original seeding within a division upon application of the division tiebreaker remains the same for all subsequent applications of the procedure that are necessary to identify the two Wild-Card participants.

• Head-to-head sweep. (Applicable only if one club has defeated each of the others or if one club has lost to each of the others.)
• 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.
• Strength of schedule in all games.
• Best combined ranking among conference teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best combined ranking among all teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
• Best net points in conference games.
• Best net points in all games.
• Best net touchdowns in all games.
• Coin toss