The first five spots in the NFC playoff picture are basically settled. Barring something truly catastrophic, we know the 8-3 San Francisco 49ers and 8-3 Detroit Lions are getting into the NFL postseason, almost surely as division champs. The 10-1 Philadelphia Eagles and 8-3 Dallas Cowboys are getting in -- one will be the NFC East champion, and the other will likely be the top wild-card team and 5-seed in the conference. Some team, by law, has to win the NFC South. Right now, that's the 5-6 Atlanta Falcons. That's five spots spoken for in the bracket.
The other two spots? Those are going down to the wire. There are six teams with a realistic chance of landing one of those two wild-card berths, with ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) giving them somewhere between a 20% and 60% chance of playing postseason football. Each of these teams can look at their future schedule and plot out a believable path toward the playoffs.
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Let's take a look at those six teams and their chances of landing one of those two wild-card spots with six weeks of football to go. I'll provide the FPI projection for each team's chances of making it to the postseason and advancing, specifically, by earning a wild-card berth. Consider this a look at what has happened so far and a breakdown of what needs to happen for these teams to achieve their goal of advancing out of the regular season.
We'll go in order of the chances to make the playoffs, starting with a team in the NFC North:
Jump to a team:
Bucs | Packers | Rams
Saints | Seahawks | Vikings
1. Minnesota Vikings (6-6)
Chances to make the playoffs: 58.5%
Chances of being a wild-card team: 46.9%
There are no half measures with the Vikings. After going 11-0 in games decided by eight points or fewer last season, they started this season by losing four of their first five games, all within that eight-point margin. They followed that up by winning five straight games, four of which were by eight points or fewer, even while losing quarterback Kirk Cousins to a season-ending Achilles tear. They've promptly followed that up by losing two games to scores in the final two minutes by a combined three points, including Monday's 12-10 defeat to the Bears.
In all, the Vikings are probably about where they should be. They're 5-6 in those eight-point games and have won their only game that was decided by more than eight, a 14-point win over the Packers (in Week 8) during the game Cousins was injured. Last season, play-by-play metrics such as DVOA had them as a below-average team with incredible luck. This season, DVOA sees them as an average team with below-average luck, most notably in recovering just 16 of the whopping 41 fumbles in their games so far. That gap was more significant during the 1-4 start, but Minnesota is about five fumble recoveries below expectation this season, which is just bad luck.
The 2022 team was impressive on offense, but its defense was a sieve. What coordinator Brian Flores has done to turn it around has been remarkable. The Vikings got off to a slow start, but from Week 4 on, they've ranked as the league's fourth-best defense by expected points added (EPA), just ahead of the solid Jets and 49ers units. Flores' pass defense has ranked second in QBR allowed, and while he has blitzed at the highest rate, the Vikings have been the second-best pass defense when they rush four or fewer, too.
What's even more impressive is the Vikings are doing this without key personnel. Marcus Davenport, signed to be the team's secondary pass-rusher behind Danielle Hunter, has played just 118 snaps over four games while battling an ankle injury. Safety Lewis Cine and cornerback Andrew Booth, the team's two top picks from the 2022 draft, have combined to play 73 defensive snaps this season, all by Booth.
Instead, other young players have stepped up. Undrafted rookie free agent Ivan Pace has developed into an every-down linebacker. Safety Josh Metellus has developed into a playmaker and ace blitzer; he has five tackles for loss and 10 quarterback knockdowns. Camryn Bynum -- asked to play the deep center-field role on the most blitz-heavy team in football -- has helped keep the Vikings from allowing a disproportionate number of deep pass completions.
Monday night showed the limitations of what a great defense can do without much help. In a game in which the Bears started three drives within 55 yards of the Minnesota end zone, the Vikings held their divisional rivals without a touchdown, limiting them instead to four field goals across 10 possessions. Keeping a team out of the end zone should be enough; over the past decade, home teams that didn't allow a touchdown had gone a combined 180-12-1.
The Vikings made that 180-13-1 because the offense couldn't get out of its own way. The Joshua Dobbs fairytale appeared to come to a very sudden stop on a day in which the journeyman quarterback threw four interceptions and was lucky to get away with avoiding a fifth. He was able to direct a late touchdown drive to take a 10-9 lead with 5:54 to go, but Chicago was able to get the ball back after a Justin Fields fumble and a three-and-out to drive into position for a winning field goal.
As fun as Dobbs has been at his best, no quarterback is going to last long throwing four interceptions per game. Remember that the Vikings initially traded for Dobbs as a backup for rookie fifth-round pick Jaren Hall, who then got hurt early in Dobbs' first game with the team. Nick Mullens, who started the season as a backup, was on injured reserve when Cousins went down. He's now back on the active roster and could start when the Vikings return from their bye in Week 14.
Given how the defense is playing, the best thing for the Vikings might be opting for the quarterback who is least likely to turn the ball over. By interception rate, that would likely be Dobbs, whose 2.7% career interception rate is below that of Mullens, even after the four-interception game. On the other hand, Dobbs also has fumbled a league-high 14 times this season across 12 starts with Arizona and Minnesota, while Mullens has only eight fumbles in four pro seasons.
Mullens has been a more productive passer, albeit while spending most of his career in a Kyle Shanahan offense in San Francisco that makes quarterbacks look better. He has averaged 7.8 yards per attempt, which is a healthy figure for even starting-level passers. Dobbs has averaged 6.0 yards per attempt and was at 5.9 yards per throw before being benched by the Cardinals. When you look at the 60 quarterbacks who have thrown at least 400 passes since 2018, Mullens ranks ninth in yards per attempt. Dobbs is 59th.
On the other hand, what might serve as the most meaningful gap between the two -- independent of scheme -- is what Dobbs can do with his legs. He leads all quarterbacks with 129 rushing yards over expectation (RYOE) on scrambles, nearly twice the total of the second-placed signal-caller, Justin Herbert. Dobbs' ability to create with his legs is a get-out-of-jail-free card for the offense, especially if and when it struggles to protect the quarterback. Mullens' longest run as a pro is 7 yards.
Whoever starts should get to play with Justin Jefferson, who was activated from injured reserve Tuesday and should be able to suit up after the bye. He was averaging nearly 3.0 yards per route run and more than 114 receiving yards per game before his hamstring injury, so he'll obviously make the offense better. With the Raiders and Bengals up first after the bye, the Vikings should be in position to get in great shape for their final three games of the season. A home-and-home with the Lions sandwiching a crucial home game against the Packers, though, will likely end up deciding whether the Vikings are returning to the playoffs or nursing their wounds in January.
2. New Orleans Saints (5-6)
Chances to make the playoffs: 50.3%
Chances of being a wild-card team: 8.9%
The Derek Carr signing from March was supposed to be simple for the Saints. While Carr wasn't likely to lead them to a Super Bowl title, a veteran team with a good defense and an experienced quarterback had to be considered a comfortable favorite to win the NFC South. If things broke right, it could get a playoff game or two at home and feel good about putting off a rebuild that has been on the cards since the end of the Drew Brees era.
Now, though, the Saints are a coin flip to sneak into the playoffs at all, let alone as division champs. Last week's loss to the arch-rival Falcons opened up the race for the South, with the Falcons taking the lead on the head-to-head tiebreaker and holding slightly better odds of winning the division title. New Orleans will have its chance to make things right at home in what could be a play-in game in Week 18, but it's playing from behind for now.
Sunday was an appropriate encapsulation of what has gone wrong in New Orleans this season. Amid injuries to offensive tackle Ryan Ramczyk and wideouts Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed at different points of the loss, the Saints were nothing short of infuriating on offense. On a day they racked up 444 net yards and 22 first downs, Pete Carmichael's offense made five trips into the red zone. It came away with a total of ... two points. It settled for three field goals, lost a fumble at the end of a Taysom Hill carry and saw Carr throw a gift-wrapped interception to Jessie Bates, who took it the rest of the way for a pick-six. The swing on that one play cost New Orleans 10 points in a game that was decided by nine.
The Saints' inability to produce in the red zone has been mystifying. They have scored touchdowns on just 42.5% of their trips inside the 20, which ranks 29th in the league. Over the first 80 yards of the field, they are exactly average in EPA per play at 0.00. Inside the red zone? They're 30th. Only the Giants and Jaguars -- who are right alongside them in EPA per play outside the red zone at 17th -- are worse.
On paper, the Saints should have the players who play up in the red zone. Hill has been a terror inside the 10-yard line for years. Running back Jamaal Williams was hurt for stretches this season, but he scored 17 touchdowns for the Lions last season, 14 of which came from inside the 5-yard line. Tight end Juwan Johnson caught seven touchdown passes last season, five of which were inside the red zone. Michael Thomas is injured, but the Saints weren't able to take advantage of the 6-foot-3 receiver's frame when healthy. Alvin Kamara, once a rushing touchdown machine, has two scores on 119 carries this season.
Could it be the offensive line? Maybe. The Saints have dealt with injuries up front and needed to bench 2022 first-round pick Trevor Penning. At the same time, Carr has been pressured on only 18.4% of his dropbacks inside the 20-yard line, which is the league's fourth-lowest rate. the Saints' running backs are averaging 1.4 yards before first contact inside the red zone, which isn't great, but that's good for 20th.
It's only realistic to put a fair amount of the blame on Carr, whose 11.2 QBR in the red zone ranks last this season. His 11 off-target passes inside the red zone are tied for the second most. A couple of those might have been passes he was throwing out of bounds deliberately, but he has missed a few that could have been touchdowns with better placement or timing. When he hasn't missed, he has been let down by the occasional drop, including one from Foster Moreau that kept the Saints from taking the Jaguars to overtime in Week 7. It's possible Carr's timing has been thrown off by the Saints occasionally inserting Hill into the quarterback role in the red zone, but for $37.5 million a year, they probably expected him to deal with a few extra snaps on the sideline per game.
Carr also hasn't gotten much help in the way of explosive plays from the running game. Kamara & Co. don't have a single run longer than 30 yards all season, making New Orleans one of four teams without such a run. Some of the data gathered from NFL Next Gen Stats suggest Kamara has slowed down. In 2020, his average maximum speed while running routes was 13.0 mph. That dropped to 12.0 in 2021, 11.3 in 2022 and 10.9 in 2023, down more than 2 mph from where it had been a season ago.
Let's put it another way. In 2020, Kamara topped 18 mph 23 times on 637 plays, which is 3.6% of the time. In 2021, that dropped to an even 3%. There was a significant drop off to 1.8% in 2022. And this season, he has topped that number five times on 373 plays, which is a mere 1.3%. There's an element of the chicken-and-egg problem here -- he would have an opportunity to go fast if he broke a big play -- but there's objective evidence suggesting the 28-year-old isn't hitting the same top speeds he was as recently as the 2020 season.
While the passing game has generated explosive plays, the offense has mostly ground down into a slog. As The Associated Press' Josh Dubow noted, Carr hasn't been on the field for a touchdown in 10 quarters, owing to injuries and disappointing play. He has been a downgrade on the play the Saints received from Andy Dalton a season ago, which is worrisome given that New Orleans is committed to a minimum of $70 million before it could move on in 2025.
The Saints are going as far as their defense will take them. They rank sixth in points allowed per drive and have forced 20 takeaways, the third most of any team. When they have allowed even 18 points in a game, they've gone 1-6. Every team is better when it allows fewer points, of course, but it's telling that New Orleans looks mostly hopeless when the opposing team gets to a relatively modest figure.
Dennis Allen's defense is still struggling to turn pressure into takedowns. The Saints rank eighth in pressure rate but 31st in sack rate. The average team turns about 23% of its pressures into sacks. As you can probably guess, the Saints are converting only a league-low 13.5% of those pressures into sacks. A season ago, they were converting just under 29% of pressures into sacks, which was the second-best rate, just behind the Eagles.
Carl Granderson got off to a hot start, but he has one sack and five knockdowns across his past five games. The defensive tackle rotation is a work in progress, but this team desperately needs longtime leader Cameron Jordan to step up. The eight-time Pro Bowler has just two sacks and six knockdowns in 11 games and ranks 46th out of 51 qualifying defenders in pass rush win rate on the edge. He has created 29 pressures, so he's getting after the quarterback eventually, but he's another veteran who looks a step slower than he did two or three years ago.
The good news for the Saints is the same wave they've been riding all season: They're not facing stiff competition. The FPI pegs them as facing the fourth-easiest schedule this season and the third-easiest slate over the rest of the way. Four of their six remaining games are at home, and after facing the Lions this weekend, they don't have a single team left on their schedule with a winning record. They have home games against the Giants, Panthers and Falcons; if the Saints come up with victories in all three, winning even one of those three would get them to nine wins and probably land them a playoff berth.
3. Green Bay Packers (5-6)
Chances to make the playoffs: 46.8%
Chances of being a wild-card team: 43.9%
No team had a better Week 12 than the Packers. They started things by beating the Lions in Detroit on Thanksgiving morning, getting a measure of revenge for 2023's season-ending loss to their rivals. The Seahawks and Vikings, two teams competing with Green Bay for wild-card berths, both lost. The Falcons beat the Saints, and while both those teams are in the playoff hunt, Green Bay would prefer the Saints to be in the wild-card picture, since it beat New Orleans (in Week 3) and would win a tiebreaker between the two. The Packers lost to the Falcons in Week 2 and therefore would lose the head-to-head tiebreaker. Even the Jets lost, which helps push the 2024 second-round pick the Packers are getting from the Aaron Rodgers trade closer to the top of that round.
After losing three of four, the Packers have now won three of four. And over that stretch, the guy replacing Rodgers has begun to come into his own. Jordan Love ranks sixth in the NFL with a 68.3 QBR over that stretch, within one-tenth of a point of what C.J. Stroud has done in Houston. Love is also sixth in yards per dropback over that stretch, and despite not having a No. 1 receiver and a rotation at left tackle after David Bakhtiari was sidelined for the season, we're seeing Love grow more confident working inside an NFL pocket.
Early in the season, Love felt confined in the pocket, like a child on a rainy day who was desperate to get outside and play. He was averaging 6.1 yards per attempt on throws inside the pocket through Week 8 despite throwing the third-deepest average pass of any QB. Love had no intermediate game from the pocket whatsoever: His 21.4 QBR on throws in the 11-to-20-yard range ranked, coming along with a minus-8.3 completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) and four picks on 41 pass attempts.
Over the past month, Love has finally begun to look comfortable. He has the fourth-best QBR on throws inside the pocket during that stretch, adding more than 2.0 yards per attempt to his prior marks. His QBR on intermediate throws out of the pocket is up a full 60 points from where it was beforehand.
The one thing that has worked for the Packers all season, even without Aaron Jones for several games, has been the play-action game. Love ranks 10th in QBR on play-action snaps. The only reason his numbers there aren't better? His receivers have dropped five of his 90 passes there, the league's third-highest rate, including a screen that probably would have produced a touchdown against the Bears in Week 1.
With one of the most inexperienced receiving corps in league history, the expectation before the season was that the Packers would rely on Christian Watson as their primary target. Watson never has seemed right, though, as he missed the first three games with a hamstring injury, and he has only topped 40 yards twice all season. He is averaging 1.5 yards per route run, down from 2.4 yards per route last season. The latter mark ranked 13th among all wide receivers a season ago, so he showed more upside than what he has revealed this season. A healthy Watson could help take Love to the next level in the weeks to come.
Instead, Love has shown an admirable ability to spread the ball around and find open receivers. The next step in his game would be to conquer the middle of the field. He ranks 26th in QBR on throws between the numbers, with a completion percentage more than five points below expectation. Losing tight end Luke Musgrave to injured reserve with a lacerated kidney won't help; an offseason project for general manager Brian Gutekunst will be landing a receiver who can win over the middle of the field for his 25-year-old signal-caller.
The defense has benefited from some well-timed bounces breaking its way over the past two weeks. It has recovered four fumbles in the wins over the Chargers and Lions. The one fumble in the Chargers game was an Austin Ekeler mistake inside Green Bay's 5-yard line, keeping L.A. off the board altogether at the end of a drive that should have yielded at least three points. Jared Goff's three fumbles in the Detroit game resulted in a defensive touchdown and another drive that began on the Lions' 23-yard line. The Packers gave up the ball on downs on the subsequent possession, but it's still a positive to see them forcing turnovers and setting the offense up with short fields.
The fumble recoveries won't continue, but the Packers should force more interceptions. After picking off 17 passes last season, coordinator Joe Barry's defense only has five picks through 11 games this campaign. Personnel changes play a factor here. Jaire Alexander has been limited to five games by injury, while Rasul Douglas was traded to the Bills at the Oct. 31 deadline. Those two corners combined for nine of Green Bay's interceptions in 2022.
Interceptions probably won't come this week with the Packers facing the Chiefs, but there will be plenty of opportunities over the final five weeks of the season. Green Bay has what must be the league's easiest stretch to finish its schedule, as they travel to play the Giants, Panthers and Vikings and have home games against the Buccaneers and Bears.
The FPI has the Packers favored in four of those games and as one-point underdogs against the Vikings. That last matchup, on New Year's Eve, could end up being a de facto play-in game for a wild-card spot in the NFC.
4. Seattle Seahawks (6-5)
Chances to make the playoffs: 39.7%
Chances of being a wild-card team: 39.0%
After Week 8, it felt like the Seahawks were going to be just fine. At 5-2, they had just successfully produced a comeback victory over the Browns, as a late interception of PJ Walker on a play that could have sealed a Cleveland win turned into a short drive and a game-winning touchdown for Seahawks wideout Jaxon Smith-Njigba. There had been hiccups -- Seattle had turned the ball over seven times across the prior three games -- but the FPI pegged its playoff chances at 76.4%.
That near loss to the Browns looks like a brief respite from what has otherwise been a collapse by the Seahawks. They have subsequently lost three of the next four games by a combined score of 111-61. You could argue they were unlucky to lose to the Rams (Week 11) when Jason Myers missed a 55-yard field goal with three ticks left, but is that any less lucky than having the Browns throw an interception when 3 yards would have ended the game?
The offense simply is not working. The Seahawks have scored a total of three offensive touchdowns in the past four games. Two of them came against the Commanders (Week 10), who were about to fire defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio. Losing Kenneth Walker III to an oblique injury hasn't helped, but the second-year back had generated minus-30 rush yards over expectation (RYOE) and a whopping 11 first downs below expectation, per the NFL Next-Gen Stats rushing model. Only Josh Jacobs has been less reliable at moving the chains when expected.
Quarterback Geno Smith isn't a one-year flash in the pan, but there are elements of his game that ran hot last season. He has excellent accuracy and ball placement, which helped lead to a league-best 4.8 completion percentage over expectation (CPOE). That hasn't changed too much in 2023, as Smith's CPOE is still at 3.5%. After posting a 1.3% interception rate during the first 10 games of last season, though, he has thrown picks nearly twice as often from that point forward. Both are better than his career mark before this point, given that he had a 3.7% career interception rate before this season.
Given a clean pocket, Smith can be a great passer. Injuries and subpar play from the offensive line have slowed down this offense, however. He has been pressured on 35.9% of his dropbacks this season, the fifth-highest rate in football. Everyone else who has been pressured more often than Smith (Deshaun Watson, Zach Wilson, Russell Wilson and Justin Fields) is the sort of quarterback who can create his own pressures by scrambling. Smith is getting pressured as a pocket passer, and while he has done a good job of avoiding sacks in those situations, those pressures are capping what the offense can do. His average completion under pressure is generating just 8.7 yards, and his average pass in those situations is the shortest in the league.
With the running game struggling to move the chains and the offensive line allowing too much pressure, it should be no surprise that the Seahawks haven't been good on third down. They're converting just 31.3% of the time, which ranks 29th. They fail to pick up a single first down on 37.2% of their drives, which ranks 27th. They've only fumbled five times, which is a positive, but there's a complete lack of consistency from coordinator Shane Waldron's offense that needs to be addressed.
Third down has also been a tough spot for the defense. Opposing teams are converting more than 44% of the time there, which is the league's sixth-worst mark. We'll get to the secondary, but the pass rush has been where the Seahawks' problems have started. They are pressuring opposing offenses just over 30% of the time on third down, which ranks 30th. Only the Panthers and Bears get pressure less often in what is frequently an obvious passing situation.
It's surprising, especially given that second-year edge rusher Boye Mafe has broken out, with seven sacks and 10 knockdowns so far. Mafe has been a bright spot, but just about everybody else has disappointed. Uchenna Nwosu, last season's breakout pass-rusher, had just two sacks and six knockdowns in six games before going on injured reserve with a pectoral injury. Defensive tackle Dre'Mont Jones, who signed a three-year, $51 million deal in the offseason, has just 2.5 sacks and has seen his role diminish over the past month. Outside linebacker Darrell Taylor has 3.5 sacks and six knockdowns and hasn't been able to compensate for Nwosu's absence.
Safety Jamal Adams, who was once the team's top pass-rusher out of sheer necessity, hasn't sacked a quarterback once since his 9.5-sack campaign in 2020. He has just four knockdowns in 20 games over the past three seasons. Adams' 2023 season has been stop and start; he has missed four games, and he was forced out of a fifth after nine snaps because of a concussion. Playing almost exclusively in the box, he needs to make an impact as a run-defender and pass-rusher. The Seahawks have only sent him on 20 pass-rushing snaps this season; I wonder if they'll blitz him more to try to give the rush a much-needed boost.
While cornerback Devon Witherspoon has been a revelation and a Defensive Rookie of the Year contender, the rest of the secondary has been more topsy-turvy. Riq Woolen, a revelation as a rookie last season, has been effective in coverage, but he has struggled as a tackler, and he was taken out of last week's game against the 49ers because of a shoulder injury that was preventing him from wrapping up effectively. Tre Brown and Mike Jackson have both seen time as the third cornerback, with Jackson returning to the lineup because of Woolen's injury last week. Brown struggled in the opening-week loss to the Rams, but he has generally been effective.
I can't say the same thing about a pair of offseason additions. Both Bobby Wagner and Julian Love have been liabilities in coverage, with NFL Next Gen Stats pegging each with a passer rating allowed north of 100 as the nearest defender in coverage. The Seahawks rank 28th on throws to receivers out of the slot and in tight before the snap this season. The 33-year-old Wagner has been better against the run and is obviously a valuable leader, while Love has been forced into a larger role by Adams' absences. Still, these are problem areas for Seattle.
The lack of a pass rush and the inability to sustain drives has led to messy endgames for the Seahawks, even in their victories. In Week 2, they blew a 10-point lead in the final four minutes against the Lions before winning in overtime. The Commanders tied the game twice in the fourth quarter in their matchup, including with 52 seconds to go, before Smith drove the Seahawks into position for a winning field goal. They weren't as lucky against the Rams, who took a lead with 1:31 to go then held onto that lead when Myers missed his field goal.
All of this is compounded by the fact that the Seahawks are in the middle of the roughest four-game stretch any team might face this season. After losing to the 49ers on Thanksgiving, they will face the Cowboys in Dallas on Thursday night. They then travel to face the 49ers again next week before finishing up this spell against the Eagles. That's four games against three of the five best teams in football.
If the Seahawks lose all three of those games, The Upshot's model would drop their playoff chances to 11%. Things get easier after that stretch, but it feels like the wheels might be coming off. They're going to need to beat one of the league's top teams to keep that perception from becoming reality.
5. Los Angeles Rams (5-6)
Chances to make the playoffs: 36.7%
Chances of being a wild-card team: 35.5%
Do the Rams qualify as a pleasant surprise? It's a little strange to say about an under-.500 team two years removed from a Super Bowl title, but most people wrote off this 2023 roster in the sort of season you would simulate through immediately in a video game. With Los Angeles clearly cutting salary last offseason in attempt to reset its cap and clear out space for 2024 and beyond, it looked to be retooling this campaign, if not rebuilding altogether.
Instead, outside of a blowout by the Cowboys in Week 8, the Rams have been consistently competitive. Sean McVay's team announced it wasn't breezing through 2023 by whipping the Seahawks in Week 1, and while it hasn't always been that easy, it has outplayed its record. The Rams were leading both the 49ers (Week 2) and Eagles (Week 5) with 30 seconds left to go in the first half before both teams scored late touchdowns, while they were tied at halftime with the Joe Burrow-led Bengals in Week 3. Two missed field goals and a failed extra point cost them in what would eventually be a comeback win for the Steelers in Week 7. I'm not saying they should have won all four of those games, but they were closer and more competitive than the final scores.
Of course, resetting the roster opened up opportunities for a pair of standout players who might have otherwise been buried on the depth chart. Allen Robinson's departure opened up a spot for Puka Nacua, who is having one of the most impressive rookie seasons from a Day 3 wideout in league history. The benching and eventual trade of running back Cam Akers created an opportunity for Kyren Williams, who is averaging 5.3 yards per carry and just accounted for 167 yards from scrimmage in a rout over the Cardinals. In a season in which the Rams haven't had the version of Cooper Kupp they were hoping to see for most of it -- he has played just seven games due to injuries -- Nacua and Williams have been essential. And as those two players combine to make less than $2 million in 2024, they'll create significant surplus value and allow the franchise to spend money elsewhere on its roster.
An offensive line that endured a historic rate of injuries last season has been much healthier. Guard Steve Avila, the team's top selection in April's draft, has played every offensive snap. Right tackle Rob Havenstein is back to form after struggling in 2022. Center Brian Allen hasn't been able to return from a knee injury, playing only eight offensive snaps, while former left tackle of the future Joe Noteboom has been in and out of the lineup and appears to have settled in as the team's swing tackle. The jury is still out on Alaric Jackson protecting quarterback Matthew Stafford's blindside, but the Rams are in a much better place up front than they were a season ago.
Stafford is somewhere between the guy who looked like an MVP contender in the first half of 2021 and the player who hasn't played consistently well since. His completion percentage has dropped by more than six percentage points, although some of that amounts to drops; his 4.7% drop rate is the league's seventh highest. It might be easy to attribute that toward the absence of Kupp, but the star wideout hasn't helped there; he has three drops on 52 targets, good for a drop rate of 5.8%.
During that first half of the 2021 campaign, Stafford dominated opposing defenses out of empty backfields, where he averaged nearly 9.0 yards per attempt and threw for 300 more yards than any other player. Since then, whether it has been a product of subpar offensive line play, injuries or some other factor, he hasn't been as successful. Stafford has only operated out of empty for 52 dropbacks this season, which is a league-average total for a player who worked out of empty much more often in 2021. He has posted a minus-9.6% CPOE and averaged 5.6 yards per attempt there this season. Again, having Kupp on the field would help, but that has to be disappointing given how Kupp once opened up defenses when they were spread wide.
One of the issues that appears to have popped up as the 35-year-old Stafford has aged is a struggle to create when pressured. During the first half of that 2021 campaign, he ranked sixth in QBR when pressured. He was 24th last season and is back there again this season. The average Stafford dropback with pressure produces just 1.4 yards, and nearly 37% of his passes under pressure are off target. Only Bryce Young and Jimmy Garoppolo have been more scattershot under pressure.
The big concern for the Rams was whether they would be able to hold up in the secondary when star defensive tackle Aaron Donald didn't get home. So far, coordinator Raheem Morris' defense has done a solid job. It ranks 14th in QBR allowed without pressure. It has been solid when rushing four or fewer. But when Morris sends a blitz, it drops to 26th in QBR allowed. In part, that's been because the blitzes haven't gotten home; Donald and the pass rush have finished the job and taken down opposing quarterbacks on just 3.1% of their blitzes, the worst rate in all of football.
While the hope was that the Rams would land on a handful of emerging standouts in the secondary, I'm not sure it's really gone that way. Cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon has done a solid job on one side of the field, but Derion Kendrick has allowed 18.6 EPA as the nearest defender in coverage on the other side, the 10th most for any corner this season. The Rams have moved Cobie Durant outside with mixed success, although injuries also have slowed the slot corner. Russ Yeast spent most of the season starting at safety, but in recent weeks, Morris has given a larger role to veteran John Johnson, who was signed just before the season after struggling in Cleveland. It would have been great to see a solidified secondary by now, especially since L.A. is in striking distance of a playoff berth.
With three of their next four games at home and a subsequent tilt on the road against the Giants, the Rams are in position to go on a run. If the Rams can sweep the Browns, Commanders and Saints in Inglewood and win that Giants game, The Upshot's model thinks they have a 90% chance of landing a playoff berth. For a team that hasn't really lost a game against inferior opposition all season, that doesn't seem like an impossible task.
6. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-7)
Chances to make the playoffs: 22.5%
Chances of being a wild-card team: 6.1%
By the FPI, there are 22 teams with a realistic chance of competing for the 14 available playoff spots. The 10 teams not in that group have no more than a 3.5% chance of landing a playoff spot. The Bucs rank 20th out of those 22 teams and last among the 11 NFC teams vying for postseason football. An impressive 3-1 start has given way to mostly frustrating results. Tampa Bay has lost six of its past seven games, and while those defeats have only come by an average of 4.4 points, this team will feel as if it left opportunities on the table.
A slightly better version of this squad would be in position to win the NFC South right now. The Bucs tied up their Week 7 game with the Falcons at 13 with 45 seconds to go, only for Atlanta to pick up 42 yards on two plays to set up the winning field goal. In Week 9 against Houston, a Cade Otton touchdown gave the Bucs a 37-33 lead with 46 seconds to go, but rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud drove the Texans 75 yards in 40 seconds for a dramatic comeback win. If the Bucs had pulled out that game against the Falcons and had held a four-point lead with less than a minute to go against the Texans, they would be 6-5 and in great shape. Instead, they're another loss to the Falcons away from falling out of the playoff picture.
Frankly, the 2023 Bucs remind me a lot of the 2022 Bucs. This season's team is being held back by the same weakness we saw last season: They can't run the ball at all. The 2022 squad ranked last in yards per carry, last in yards before first contact, 31st in expected yards per carry and 30th in rush yards over expectation per carry. The blocking was bad, the backs were bad and the offense never found a solution.
The organization fired offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich and cut veteran back Leonard Fournette this offseason in the hopes of getting the run game going. Neither move has solved its problems. The 2023 Bucs again rank last in yards per carry and last in yards before first contact. They're 24th in expected yards per carry as a production of their blocking, but Rachaad White & Co. have generated minus-0.6 RYOE per attempt, the worst mark in the league. The Bucs are bad at just about every facet of the run game.
With the move from Tom Brady to Baker Mayfield at quarterback, the Bucs also have run the ball more often on early downs. They have the 15th-highest pass rate on early downs in neutral situations, down from eighth a season ago. They only convert 20.1% of their plays on first and second downs into a new set of downs or a touchdown, which ranks 29th.
It looks like the Bucs are willing to forgo the possibility of picking up first downs early in series to live in a third-and-manageable world, but because they're not effective running the ball on first and second down, their average third down comes with seven yards to go, which is right at the league average. And they are picking up 40.4% of those third downs, which ranks 15th. If an offense is going to try to stay alive for third-and-manageable situations, it has to be better at both making its third downs easier and picking them up than an average team.
Surprisingly, the other big weakness for the Bucs has been in coverage. They have had to cut back on spending after successfully mortgaging some of their cap future to build the best possible team around Brady, but one of the places they've prioritized has been on defense. Cornerbacks Carlton Davis and Jamel Dean are on significant deals, linebacker Lavonte David was brought back for yet another season and linebacker Devin White is playing out an $11.7 million fifth-year option. Safety Antoine Winfield is still around in the final year of his rookie deal, so on paper, this looked like it would be a strength for Todd Bowles & Co..
Instead, teams have been able to throw on the Bucs. They rank 10th in QBR allowed when they get pressure on the opposing quarterback, but when the pass rush doesn't get home, they are 29th. Only the Bengals, who underwent an offseason rebuild in the secondary and lost multiple starters, are allowing more yards per attempt when they don't create pressure. Rookies Calijah Kancey and Yaya Diaby have flashed up front -- and Vita Vea is still an excellent player -- but opposing quarterbacks have been able to beat Tampa Bay's pass defenders. Those two starting cornerbacks have each missed a couple of games, but Davis notably allowed three touchdowns in the loss to the Texans.
Realistically, the Bucs can't afford to have their stars struggle or miss time, because they don't have the depth that they enjoyed during the Brady era. They have had nine rookies play at least 150 snaps this season, which is tied for the league lead with four other teams. They only had three picks in the top 150 in April, so that's a bunch of late-round picks and undrafted free agents seeing time because they couldn't afford veterans in those roles. It's good to see players such as wideout Trey Palmer and safety Christian Izien getting opportunities, but this team needs the likes of Davis, Dean, White and Mike Evans to play at a high level week in and week out to thrive. That hasn't always been the case in 2023.
The Bucs, however, have something no other team gets to enjoy over the remainder of the season: two games against the Panthers, including one in Tampa on Sunday. We'll see if the Panthers get any better after firing Frank Reich and several members of his staff, but the Bucs' playoff hopes would be on life support if they were to be upset by 1-10 Carolina. Mayfield and the Bucs still have four games left against the NFC South; they probably need to sweep all four to have a strong chance of advancing to their fourth consecutive postseason.