Four Weeks Left

The New England Patriots are 12-0, having just barely escaped both the Eagles and the Ravens in their last two games. If the Pats can win two more games, they will have locked up home field advantage throughout the playoffs, and will have no more incentive to win their final two games. Their next three games are at home -- Pittsburgh, the Jets, and Miami -- and their last game is at the New York Giants. If the Pats can't beat the Jets and Miami, they don't deserve to be in the playoffs, much less at home there.

Indianapolis is recovered from two narrow losses, one to New England and one to San Diego; they lost those two games by a combined total of six points. Peyton threw four strikes Sunday. There's a reason why they're the Super Bowl champions and they cannot be counted out of anything, including beating the Pats in the AFC Championship game. I'm not saying the Pats wouldn't be favored, or that they shouldn't be -- I'm saying there's a reason they play these games on the field and not on PlayStation.

With that said, The AFC's wild card spots will be given to Jacksonville and Cleveland. Period. Full stop. There is no reasonably foreseeable way that can't happen. The only real issue left to work out in the AFC is how to seed them against San Diego and Pittsburgh.

In the NFC, it seems that if you have a winning record, you're in the playoffs. Even that may not be necessary. As of right now, the wild-card teams would be the New York Football Giants (8-4) and either Detroit, Minnesota, or Arizona. All of them have 6-6 records right now; at the moment, Detroit holds the edge in tiebreaker priority with a better division record than the other two teams (the record of head-to-head competition between these three teams does not break the ties except as between Detroit and Arizona).

At the top of the ticket, Dallas is to New England as Green Bay is to Indianapolis. These four teams have the inside track -- the far inside track -- to go all the way to The Big Game (r) XLII in Phoenix this February. Now, it's conceivable that a Republican will win the White House in November, which is about as likely as the possibility that the NFC champion will win the Super Bowl. Yes, I know New England has stumbled a bit in the past two games. But the idea of either the Packers or the Cowboys beating either the Colts or the Patriots is about as likely as the prospect of a Republican beating Hillary Clinton next November.

All the same, I would prefer to see the Packers take that trip instead of the Cowboys -- and even the Dallas media concedes that this is a realistic possibility. Dallas lost by 10, beating Green Bay without Brett Favre, Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, and Charles Woodson. They will not have such an advantage in January.

Although we should have Favre back for the Oakland game next Sunday, Aaron Rodgers really did look good for most of the game against the Cowboys and that gives me hope for the future. A younger quarterback would have been completely overwhelmed by that defense. Rodgers kept his head on and snaked them for several first-down runs himself. His athleticism is not on the level of, say, a Michael Vick by any means, but that's probably a good thing because his job is not to be a high-priced running back. But one thing is, Rodgers needs a shave and a haircut -- badly.

Mathematically eliminated from playoff contention: New York Jets, Miami, San Francisco, and St. Louis. Effectively eliminated from playoff contention: Atlanta, Baltimore, Carolina, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, New Orleans, Oakland, Philadelphia, and Washington. Teams with something left to fight for: for the next two weeks, everyone not mentioned in this paragraph.