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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/vitex198 on 2024-12-21 10:18:12+00:00.

With all the talk of how the playoff picture is close to already being decided after the Chargers won on Thursday, it’s worth remembering that at the cost of a relative lack of excitement near the middle of the standings, we have some very competitive races for both the basement and top seeds.

My current (and relatively plausible) predictions for those ten teams are as follows:

15-2: Chiefs, Eagles, and Lions

14-3: Bills and Vikings

3-14: Browns, Titans, and Patriots (I considered the Panthers but think they might beat the Falcons)

2-15: Giants and Raiders

There’s hardly even anything quite like this in NFL history, twelve teams won or lost at least 12 games in 2022 but 12-5 or 5-12 are still much less extreme outcomes compared to 14-3 or 3-14. Only five teams’ seasons had gone that good/bad in the three previous seasons with a 17 game schedule.

If you try to compensate for the one extra game teams are getting this year by looking for 13+ win or loss seasons in the 16 game era, you’re still not finding anything close to this year; the most I could find was seven in 2011.

Is there much to gleam from this, not really? I just thought it was a pretty interesting footnote for when we’re all debating who’s winning the super/tank bowls; there’s somehow five contenders for each of them and that’s never happened before. I’ll take this sort of competition over last year, where it felt like every team sucked, any day of the week.