San Francisco 49ers: Scenarios Required for Each Playoff Slot

If the NFL playoffs were to start today, the San Francisco 49ers would find themselves on the outside looking in.  Sitting at 4-3, going into their bye week, the 49ers would find themselves as the seventh seed in the NFC, which isn’t good for anything more than a date with the couch.

Of course, if the playoffs were to start today, the 49ers would find themselves surprised by almost no contributions from NaVorro Bowman, Aldon Smith, Anthony Davis or Tramaine Brock. 

The return of these four players, as well as generally getting healthy after the bye week, means the 49ers certainly aren’t going to go down without a fight.  They should be better in the second half of the year than they were in the first half.

So there are both reasons to be pessimistic—the 49ers were beaten down pretty badly by Denver and losses to Arizona and Chicago could be murder in terms of tiebreakers—and reasons to be optimistic—healthy players are coming back.

In fact, 4-3 teams have made the playoffs almost exactly 50 percent of the time since 1990, according to Benjamin Morris of FiveThirtyEight.com, meaning the 49ers are right on the knife’s edge of making the playoffs or not.  They still control their own destiny for the playoffs, but they will likely need things to go their way to get into a good spot.

To sum things up, I don’t think the 49ers will make the playoffs if they play at the same level they’ve played over the last seven games.  I do, however, think the 49ers will play significantly better over the remaining nine games, thanks to the returning players.

What this slideshow will do is look at what the 49ers need to do from here on out to get each of the six playoff seeds, as well as what the season would look like if they missed the playoffs entirely.  We’ll be looking at which games the 49ers have to win and where to root against conference rivals.

We’ll start with what it would take for the 49ers to ensure the road to Super Bowl XLIX goes through Levi’s Stadium.

No. 1 Seed: Home-Field Advantage

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It’s still mathematically possible for the top seed in the NFC to finish at 8-8, but that’s far from being realistic.  For the 49ers to have a real shot at home-field advantage, they’re going to need to end the season at 12-4 or 13-3, meaning the margin for error is going to be very tight.

There are four quite difficult games left on San Francisco’s schedule—the tough, two-game road trip to the New Orleans Saints and the New York Giants, as well as both games against the Seattle Seahawks.  For the 49ers to compete for the top seed in the playoffs, they’ll need to win at least three out of those four matchups.  Let’s give them everything but the road game in Seattle, meaning they’d finish at 12-4.

A record of 12-4 will almost assuredly win the division.  The Arizona Cardinals still have to face the Seahawks twice, the Dallas Cowboys on the road and feisty road games against the St. Louis Rams and Atlanta Falcons.  

Despite the records, I still consider the Seahawks the tougher divisional opponent…but they’ve already lost three games this season.  Both the Seahawks and Cardinals drop a game to the 49ers in this scenario, as well.  I think the 49ers can be comfortable assuming they’ll win the division at 12-4.

However, it’s not just the divisional rivals they have to worry about.  To finish first overall in the conference, they’ve got to outdistance the other three divisional winners.

There’s no reason to worry about the NFC South; the only team that could feasibly finish ahead of a 12-4 San Francisco team would be the Carolina Panthers, and they’ve still got games against the Seahawks, Philadelphia Eagles, Saints and Falcons left.  You can safely forget about them.

The NFC East features two teams the 49ers would have to get past—the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles.  The 49ers, thankfully, have the tiebreaker against both teams thanks to their head-to-head victories, so we just have to find three losses for each team.

One of those losses for each team will likely come against each other—they still have to play both ends of their home-and-home series.  For the 49ers’ sake, let’s call that a split.  Dallas then would have to lose two more games—say, at Chicago in Week 14 and one of their other two road divisional matchups against New York or Washington—as would Philadelphia. 

This is where the other NFC West teams could help—the Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals might provide the Eagles with the two losses they need, or else you’d likely need Philly to lose on the road to divisional rivals or Houston.

One loss for Philadelphia would actually hurt the 49ers—they play the Green Bay Packers in Week 11.  That’s the final hurdle the 49ers would need to get over to clinch home-field advantage, and that’s a tough sell.  The Packers are probably the best team in the NFC at the moment, and the 49ers don’t have a natural tiebreaker against them.

The Packers would need to lose three more games for the 49ers to catch them.  The three most likely losses are this week at New Orleans, Week 11 in Lambeau against Philadelphia and Week 15 on the road in Buffalo.  I don’t like the odds of any of that happening, but that’s what the 49ers would need.

It’s a rough slate, but it's not impossible.

No. 2 Seed—Bye Week

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Fortunately, the 49ers don’t need to have the absolute best record to have a chance at a week off.  They also know they can go on the road and beat the Packers in a playoff game, so perhaps it would be acceptable to simply get the second seed and go from there.

This is much more feasible in the long term.  If the 49ers do win the NFC West, they’ll almost assuredly get the second or third seed.  While 7-9 is still mathematically eligible for that second slot, the 49ers are likely looking at somewhere between 11 and 13 wins to lock up a bye week. 

That’s essentially the previous scenario, minus hoping the Packers lose games they’ll be favored in.  Heck, it makes it easier, because now the 49ers are helped if the Packers beat the Eagles in Week 11.

In fact, it’s so much easier, the 49ers have a relatively realistic path to get the seed winning only 10 games, as thus:

• San Francisco wins all their remaining home games and their road game against Oakland, finishing at 10-6.
• Arizona loses all their road games and their home game against Philadelphia, finishing at 9-7.
• Seattle wins on the road against Carolina but loses its other four remaining road games, finishing at 9-7.
• Dallas wins on the road at Jacksonville but drops the rest of its road games and its home game against Indianapolis, finishing at 10-6.
• Philadelphia wins on the road against Arizona as previously mentioned, but drops the rest of its road games to finish 10-6.

In that scenario, the 49ers win the tiebreaker at 10-6, thanks to head-to-head victories over both Dallas and Philadelphia, so they’d get the bye week.

In short, the 49ers are almost to a bye if home teams win every game from here on out.  Root for the home teams, with the exceptions of San Francisco at Oakland, Indianapolis at Dallas and Philadelphia at Arizona, and you know precisely what is needed for the 49ers to get a bye week.  Everything else is gravy.

No. 3 Seed—A First-Round Home Game

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

If the 49ers win their division, they’re almost positively going to be the second or third seed in the conference.  A third seed would almost be disappointing, considering the 49ers' tiebreakers-in-hand against the Cowboys and Eagles.

Much like the second seed, the 49ers will realistically have to get 10-13 wins to win the division.  Unlike the second seed, however, there’s almost no scoreboard watching required.

The key game to winning the division, as we expected before the season began, is the Thanksgiving Day game against the Seattle Seahawks in Levi’s Stadium.  As long as the 49ers take care of business as it relates to all their home games—and their road game in Oakland, which is a home game in terms of travel—they should manage to come out on top of the NFC West.

The 49ers lead up to that crucial Seahawks game with a home game against Washington, which hasn’t been the toughest opponent so far.  The Seahawks, on the other hand, will be coming off a feisty home game against the Arizona Cardinals.

Not only have the Cardinals been very good so far this season—even if they haven’t gotten to the hardest part of their schedule yet—but they beat the Seahawks in Seattle last season.  Add in the travel on a short week and the Seahawks should be at a disadvantage coming into that game.

If that game were to be played this week, I would favor the Seahawks.  However, the 49ers should have quite a few players back for that one, including Patrick Willis, Aldon Smith and possibly NaVorro Bowman.  Circle Thanksgiving on your calendar, because that game could decide the division.

I realize I’m focusing on the third-place Seahawks more than the first-place Cardinals, but I just feel they’re bound to come back to the pack.  The only result that’s surprised me so far about Arizona was winning on the road against the Giants; they’ve had a fairly soft schedule overall so far. 

Their road schedule is tough, with Seattle, Dallas and San Francisco still on their slate.  They also have to host Philadelphia, Kansas City and Detroit at home.  I just feel they’re a bit of a paper tiger at the moment, bound to fall back to the pack sooner or later.

No. 4 Seed—The Other First-Round Home Game

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It’s very, very difficult to picture the 49ers actually getting the fourth seed.  Winning the division alone will almost certainly give them a better seed, because the NFC South is terrible so far this year.

The Carolina Panthers sit atop the division…at 3-3-1.  Behind them are the 2-4 New Orleans Saints, the 2-5 Atlanta Falcons and the 1-5 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  These are shades of the 2010 NFC West, where the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks earned a playoff berth.

To get the fourth seed, then, the 49ers not only have to win their division, but they have to do it with few enough wins that the Panthers, Saints or Falcons can't catch them from behind.  It’s very, very difficult to see that happening if the 49ers end up with more than 10 or 11 wins and somehow winning the division at 9-7 would be difficult.

At the moment, I have Carolina winning the division…at 7-8-1.  However, if the 49ers are to lose out to one of the NFC South teams, it might be the 2-5 Falcons who have the best shot.

The Falcons, if they can upset Arizona, could have the advantage over the 49ers in a common-games tiebreaker.  They’ve already guaranteed at least a split with the Saints, whom the 49ers have to play on the road. 

The other common games—Chicago and the New York Giants—also either have been 49ers losses or have had to be played on the road.  It’s conceivable that the 49ers could lose that tiebreaker, 1-4 to 2-3 or something along those lines.

The Falcons also have a softer schedule than New Orleans, which still has games against Green Bay and Baltimore remaining, not to mention road games against Pittsburgh and Chicago.

So, let’s say the Falcons upset the Detroit Lions in London, the Cardinals in Atlanta and the Panthers in Carolina.  That would get them to 9-7.

The 49ers would probably still need to beat the Seahawks in San Francisco to win the division, but they would have the divisional record tiebreaker over Seattle, thanks to their loss against St. Louis.  They would also need Arizona to lose an extra game—could the Rams help them out here, too?—but a 9-7 49ers team could theoretically come out on top.

That means we have to find one more loss for the 49ers, and the most likely candidate is Week 16 against San Diego.  While it’s a home game, the Chargers are a tough matchup with Philip Rivers.  I have the 49ers winning that game, but it’s not too difficult to imagine it going the other way.

So, then you’d have a 9-7 49ers team losing out to a 9-7 Falcons team and having to end up as the fourth seed.  It’s unlikely, to say the least.

Fifth Seed—A Date with the NFC South

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

More likely, the only way the NFC South race is going to affect the 49ers is if they get the top wild-card slot and have to travel to the Panthers, Falcons or Saints for their first playoff game.

If you’re conceding the division as a 49ers fan, you’re opening up the path for a 9-7 season to get the 49ers in the playoffs.  You’re also shrugging off, to a certain extent, matchups with Seattle and Arizona, and are instead concerned with the likes of Detroit, Chicago and the Philadelphia/Dallas loser—those are the top competitors for a wild-card slot at the moment.

However, because of the head start that Philadelphia and Dallas have, it’s still probably important for the 49ers to get to 10-6 to really guarantee the wild-card berth, which again brings us to having to beat the Seahawks in Seattle.  No matter what you do, the season still seems to hinge around that game.

Of course, the Seahawks also help the 49ers in their wild-card hunt, because they play the Eagles.  If you’re counting out the division, you’re rooting for the Seahawks to take down the Eagles in Week 14 or the Cardinals to do it this week.

The Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions, while ahead at the moment, could come crashing down soon.  Both teams have tough draws this week, with the Bears taking on the New England Patriots and the Lions stuck with a London game.  Both teams still have games left against the Patriots and Packers, too—a 10-6 49ers team should get past either of them with room to spare.

That leaves the Eagles, hence why 49ers fans might find themselves, awkwardly, part of the 12th man in Week 14.

Sixth Seed—Backing in

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The 49ers actually control their own destiny for this spot.  If they win out, they will be, at worst, the sixth seed.

Of course, if they win out, they’ll likely have a bye week.  A more realistic scenario for the 49ers getting a sixth seed is a record between nine and 11 wins.

The most likely non-NFC West team to get the fifth seed is the loser of Dallas/Philadelphia out in the NFC East, so the 49ers would just have to concentrate on outpacing the Cardinals, Lions and Bears (oh my) to ensure themselves a ticket to the postseason.

The 49ers do not have the tiebreaker over the Bears, thanks to the Week 2 loss.  They also will be unlikely to have the tiebreaker over the Lions, thanks to a tougher conference schedule (having to play the NFC East rather than the NFC South).  The tiebreaker against Arizona is still very much in the air, as Arizona still has two games to go against Seattle and St. Louis.

If Detroit only wins their home games from here on out, it’d finish at 9-7.  That means they’d either need to lose one of their remaining non-Chicago home games (Miami, Minnesota or Tampa Bay), or the 49ers would have to get to 10 wins.

The Big Four games then loom large—both Seattle games and the two-game road trip to New Orleans and the Giants.  If the 49ers go 0-4 in that set, it’s very, very difficult to see a path which ends up with them in the playoffs.

Missing the Playoffs

Joe Mahoney/Associated Press

To show the dangers of finishing at only 9-7, look at this scenario:

• The 49ers win their non-Seattle home games and their road trip to Oakland, finishing at 9-7.
• Seattle loses to Kansas City and Philadelphia on the road, but otherwise it wins out, finishing at 11-5 and taking the NFC West.
• The Eagles and Cowboys battle one another throughout the year, but they keep serve at home.  Philly loses on the road to Arizona and Green Bay to finish 12-4, while Dallas takes the division at 13-3 with a loss in Chicago.  That’s one wild-card spot taken.
• The Packers coast to victory in the NFC North.  The Detroit Lions, meanwhile, win the rest of their home schedule and their trip to London this week, finishing at 10-6—ahead of the 49ers.

The 49ers would have a winning record at 9-7…and still be watching the playoffs from home.

Double-digit wins are not a necessity to make the postseason, but anything less is going to require a lot of help in games the 49ers can’t control.

The 4-3 start hasn’t doomed the 49ers’ playoff chances, but it has cut down their margin for error.  They’re going to have go 6-3 from here on out to have a realistic shot of ending up in the playoffs in the tough NFC.

Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the San Francisco 49ers.  Follow him @BryKno on Twitter.