NFL Playoff Scenarios: How Week 15's Results Affect NFC, AFC Playoff Picture

The 2014 NFL playoffs are a third of the way there. Four teams clinched on Sunday, leaving another eight spots still available.

Both the AFC and NFC feature some intriguing postseason storylines heading into the final two weeks of the regular season. With so many teams still hovering near the top of the standings, a few spots won't be decided until the final whistle of the regular season.

Week 15 did go some way to eliminating the drama, though.

AFC

The AFC playoff race is a little more anticlimactic after Sunday. The Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots and Denver Broncos all won their respective divisions with Week 15 victories.

For the Patriots, winning the AFC East is pretty much old hat by now. They've won the division in each of the last six years and in 12 of the last 14 years. New England's only the fourth team in NFL history to go six consecutive years with a division crown, per the team's Twitter account:

The Patriots might be the hottest team in the AFC right now.

The Colts, meanwhile, are riding a four-game winning streak themselves. This is the second year in a row Indianapolis won the South and third year in a row the franchise is headed to the postseason.

While the Colts are a good team, their four losses—home to the Philadelphia Eagles and Patriots and away to the Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers—give you pause in terms of their Super Bowl hopes.

The Broncos had arguably the biggest win among the three division champions, hitting the road and beating the San Diego Chargers.

Nobody's secured home-field advantage just yet, with both the Patriots and Broncos at 11-3 and the Colts at 10-4.

The only division still up for grabs in the conference is the North, which the Cincinnati Bengals still lead. The Bengals cruised past the Browns in Cleveland, which led Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio to quip that Cincy should stay on the road for every game:

The Steelers and Baltimore Ravens are still hot on Cincinnati's heels, with both teams winning on Sunday. And the Bengals finish with the Broncos and Steelers. They could go from potential division champs to out of the playoffs altogether in the space of two weeks.

The North race is far from over.

In regard to the wild-card hunt, here's a look at the teams with a realistic chance of winning one of the two places:

	Team	W	L	T
Wild	Pittsburgh Steelers	9	5	0
Card	Baltimore Ravens	9	5	0
	Kansas City Chiefs	8	6	0
	San Diego Chargers	8	6	0
	Buffalo Bills	8	6	0

The Chargers and Chiefs play each other in Week 17, which means one of the two will finish 9-7 at best. A 10-6 record could be the cutoff point, so winning next week is imperative for San Diego and Kansas City.

The Chiefs play the Steelers as well, so a win there would throw the AFC wild-card race into disarray.

NFC

The playoff picture in the NFC is much cloudier in large part because all of the division races remain open, and the second-place teams are within at least one game of the leaders.

In the NFC North, the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions are deadlocked at 10-4 and face off in the final week of the season. Of the four divisional competitions in the conference, the North is the most fun.

The Arizona Cardinals are the only team in the NFC to have secured a playoff spot. The Cardinals beat the St. Louis Rams on Thursday to move to 11-3, and the Dallas Cowboys' victory over the Eagles meant that Arizona will at the very least get a wild-card bid:

The Cardinals can clinch the NFC West next week against the Seattle Seahawks, which will be much easier said than done. Seattle's arguably the hottest team in the league right now.

Head coach Pete Carroll spoke about his team's improvement in recent weeks following Seattle's win over the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, per Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times:

"

We have definitely elevated, and we've gotten back to the connection that it takes to play with this kind of intensity. This is what you’re trying to do, right at this time of year, the finish is so crucial. Really, we couldn't be more excited about the way that they feel about what they're doing. They know. The players know what's going on. They can feel it; they know what's shifted, they know what happened, and now, we have to recreate it each week.

"

As NFL Network's Rich Eisen pointed out, the Seahawks' destiny is in their own hands:

The game is in Glendale, so it would be unwise to dismiss the Cardinals offhandedly in Week 16. They will be at a major disadvantage following the news that Drew Stanton could be out for a month, per ESPN's Chris Mortensen. Starting a third-string quarterback against the Seahawks secondary is a recipe for disaster.

The Cowboys are the only other team that can clinch next week. Dallas would need to beat the Colts and then have the Eagles lose to the Washington Redskins. Considering how bad Washington's been, it doesn't seem likely that will happen.

Whereas the AFC lacks compelling division battles but makes up for it with a competitive wild-card fight, the opposite is true in the NFC.

With Arizona clinching a berth, only eight teams have a chance of securing the remaining five spots at this stage, with the 9-5 Eagles, 5-8 New Orleans Saints and 5-9 Atlanta Falcons—the latter two fighting with the Carolina Panthers for control of the NFC South—the odd men out at the moment. Still, Philadelphia's only a game back of Green Bay in addition to being a game back of the Cowboys in the East.