Can anyone confirm that this is true? It sounds questionable to me.
Falcon -- the "lead" of the Bears is meaningless unless they sweep the Packers this year. If the Pack win that game by more than 3, they can actually go into the final week with 1 more loss than the Bears and STILL win the division. (That's how it works for those Bear fans patting themselves on the back for the win in week 3.) I fully agree that the game in Atlanta will show just how far the Pack has come this season, but certainly not a "must win" game by any calculation. However, if the Falcons lose, not only will the Pack show their greatness, but Atlanta will no longer be the top seed in the NFC. Much more at stake for the dirty birds.
"gbguy20" wrote:
"Nonstopdrivel" wrote:
seems legit to me. it basically says that if we end the season tied but we beat them by more than 3 points, then we take the division. unless that isn't the part you were questioning.
Actually, no that's not the case. Here are the tiebreaking procedures:
http://www.nfl.com/standings/tiebreakingprocedures I'm not really sure what they mean with tiebreakers 7 and 8. I assume they mean they take your rank within the conference for points scored (out of 16) and add that to your rank for points allowed to get a score and whoever is lower would advance (or repeat for all NFL teams if it's a tie). Regardless, tiebreakers 2 through 6 have nothing to do with points scored and there is no mention of aggregate score in the head to head matchup.
If Green Bay goes into the final game against Chicago a game behind we can win and nullify the first tiebreaker. Then it goes to division record, then common games, then conference, then strength of victory, and then strength of schedule before any tiebreaker relating to points.
There is no way it gets past strength of schedule as the only two different games Green Bay and Chicago have are Atlanta vs. Carolina and San Francisco vs. Seattle. I don't see San Fran being anywhere near as far behind Seattle in schedule as Carolina will be behind Atlanta come seasons end. We will almost certainly have that tiebreaker.
If we go down the line the division record tiebreaker could well be a tie. If we beat Detroit and Chicago we can't possibly lose this tiebreaker as Chicago would have one loss to us and would have to beat Minnesota and Detroit still to tie us. I think this one will likely end in a tie or us having the advantage if Minnesota edges out Chicago. I feel the Lions are just too unfortunate this year.
Then it goes to common games which will mean record in the NFC East and AFC East as the other common games are already tied at this point (division games). This could be a bitch to speculate although we can figure it using the non-common games. Chicago has played their two and went 1-1 (beat Carolina but lost to Seattle). If we go 1-1 (say lose to Atlanta and beat San Francisco, probably likely) then our common games would also be tied in this scenario.
Thus, we would head to conference schedule. Under this scenario we are assuming division and non-common games are both the same, leaving record in the NFC East as the remaining tiebreaker for conference record. Both Green Bay and Chicago have beaten Dallas and lost to the Redskins. Green Bay has beaten the Eagles and Chicago has lost to the Giants. So there is no way Chicago can win this, but they could tie if Green Bay loses to the Giants and Chicago beats the Eagles.
Finally, that takes us to strength of victory. Right now I think Green Bay has the edge with wins against the Eagles and Jets. The Bears biggest win (against us) would be nullified in this scenario as we would have beaten them also and have the same record. This one could shake out anyway though.
In short, there are a million different things that can happen with the tiebreakers if Green Bay heads into the final game behind one game and beats Chicago. We would more likely than not have a tiebreaker over them given our favorable position within division (assuming we beat them) and conference record as well as the strength of our schedule. I would rather we just win outright though.
Born and bred a cheesehead