Can we have a little fun this Saturday before The Ohio State Buckeyes face off with Indiana in a surprise 2 vs 5 matchup?
The Cleveland Browns have three wins this season and any chance of making the NFL playoffs is pretty much over. On the other hand, the Browns have victories over the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers which can allow fans, and DBN, to at least think about the miracle story.
Last year, Cleveland ran the table late in the year to make the AFC playoffs. This year, the Browns won’t have the luxury of sitting players in Week 18 if they want to make miracles happen as they would need to win out against a very difficult schedule to get to 9-8:
- Week 13: @ Denver Broncos – MNF
- Week 14: @ Pittsburgh Steelers
- Week 15: Kansas City Chiefs
- Week 16: @ Cincinnati Bengals – No longer on TNF
- Week 17: Miami Dolphins
- Week 18: @ Baltimore Ravens
Want to know how tough that schedule is? FanDuel currently has Cleveland’s over/under win total set at 4.5 for the season despite the Browns already having three victories.
Here is where things get a little interesting. Using ESPN’s playoff machine tool, if Cleveland somehow wins out there is at least one simple path to the playoffs. While it seemed like it might take some maneuvering to figure out that path, instead just choosing that all games were decided by the team with the best offense winning (besides Browns games) gave us the results we were looking for:
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Obviously, that is not how things work in the NFL as that criterion led the Steelers to lose out and the Broncos to only win one more game but it made things easy to show that Cleveland’s path could be realistic… if they win out.
That big if is why the Browns will not be in the playoffs but we might have to revisit this conversation if they pull off victories in Denver and Pittsburgh the next two weeks.
