A tie is our worse outcome… it eliminates our tiebreaker possibilities without handing either a full loss.
Ideally Cinci wins, then we win vs Cleveland, then we beat Cinci next week . Baltimore is on a bye The browns play at Denver… which could go either way
That scenario puts us at 8-3 with 4 division wins and at least one vs every division team
The Ravens would be at 7-4 and 2-3 in the division
The Bengals would be 6-5 and 1-3 in the division
The Browns would either be 7-4 or 6-5 and would be 2-3 in the division
This means we would have every division tiebreaker sewn up with two wins the next two weeks and the battered Bengals miraculously beating the Ratbirds Thursday night.
With just six remaining games every one of them will have to beat us by at least one win or tie
We would start +1 in the win department over the teams 7-4 and +2 over teams 6-5.
So
if we went 0-6, a 7-4 team would have to go 2-4 to beat us
If we went 1-5, a 7-4 team would have to go 3-3 to beat us
If we went 2-4, a 7-4 team would have to go 4-2 to beat us
If we went 3-3, a 7-4 team would have to go 5-1 to beat us
If we went 4-2, a 7-4 team would have to go 6-0 to beat us
If we magically won 5 or more the division would be over
Now if the Ravens win, the tiebreaker with them would come down to us either winning the Browns and both Cincinnati games, or just beating them in the final game, so it really drops all those numbers by one and at 8-3 we would basically be playing them even down the stretch
