If the season ended today, the playoff teams in the NFC would be:
1. NFC East: Philadelphia (6-0)
2. NFC North: Minnesota (5-1)
3. NFC West: Seattle (4-3)
4. NFC South (ugh): Tampa Bay (3-4)
5. The New York Football Giants (6-1)
6. Dallas (5-2)
7. Los Angeles Rams (3-3)
If you had the Giants and Seahawks on your NFC playoff teams parlay before the season started, you’re probably looking at real estate right now. The Bucs and Packers wallowing in sub-.500 mediocrity is quite surprising, even if some were predicting down years for the teams and the legends at quarterback. However, for each team, the immediate future does not look especially bright: Brady and Rodgers lost this weekend to P.J. Walker and Taylor Heinicke respectively, which is bad enough, but this week it goes from bad to worse as the Bucs welcome the Baltimore Ravens to town on Thursday, while the Packers get to make the slow death march* to Buffalo to take on Josh Allen and the Bills… as the Bills return from a bye week.
*- slow death march being equivalent to trying to board a plane at Pearson International Airport. Fortunately for the Pack, they’ll charter a plane and can avoid that place regardless
The interesting thing to consider here is that the Bucs still lead the NFC South and have tiebreakers over the Falcons and Saints for the division. They don’t have the tiebreaker over the Panthers, but if they end up tied with Carolina, they’ll probably be fighting over a top draft pick, so that would be to their advantage. Yes, the NFC South is a special kind of awful – the only team to win this week was the moribund Panthers, but that was only because they faced the division-leading Bucs and steamrolled them 21-3. The Falcons got blown out by the once-again feisty Bengals, while the Saints gave away a game to the equally awful Arizona Cardinals. In this division, the only team to really show any kind of life in recent weeks is Atlanta, a team that is – to put it charitably – short on talent, but at least they’re putting up a fight. The Panthers may move to that scrappy territory if they play the way they did on Sunday, though their talent levels did decrease significantly with the Christian McCaffrey trade to San Francisco.
At this stage, the division winner is likely to come from Tampa Bay, if they can turn around their current malaise, or Atlanta. Atlanta has the look and feel of a 7-10 team if all goes together nicely (and losing Cordarrelle Patterson does not fit that category), while Tampa Bay looks like a rudderless team (especially on offense) but also looks like a team that could get some players back and make a run.
APY NFL FOOTBALL POOL RESULTS AND STANDINGS
In Week 7, our top scorer was Salvo, who came up big with a 14 point week – his week was a poolie’s dream as he scored at least two points more than anyone else, and vaulted back towards the top of the standings. Salvo is now in a tie for seventh place, with 70 points!
At the top of the overall standings remains Donna P, who stretched her lead from 2 to 4 points, as her 78 points puts her ahead of second place Darryl, who has 74 points and a two-point advantage over Adam, Fred, and Randy. As we can see, Donna is starting to pull away from the field a bit so the pressure will be on the rest of us to keep close the rest of the way.
Here are the standings after Week 7
