ezbills

I'm excluding ties as a possibility... so we need wins the final two games and also two of the following three things: 1) Bengals lose to Denver and Pittsburgh (those games matter to DEN and PIT for seeding purposes), 2) Chargers lose to Chiefs (KC is at home and still in the hunt themselves), 3) Ravens lose to Browns (Browns are out but could play spoiler role vs. a rival like the Redskins vs. Eagles).

Right, also if you say the team with the better power ranking wins every game, we get the help we need, if you change the Pats-Bills game to a W we're in. The SD loss just took away our realistic margin for error so the most realistic scenario before is pretty close to the only realistic scenario now.

Good point, hadn't thought of a tie between them, so we wouldn't be mathmatically eliminated but we'd be practically eliminated. We need the Chiefs to lose this week for any realistic chance to stay alive, a Texans win would be huge but isn't necessary.

A kick to the balls, but not fatal (yet at least). Our likeliest playoff scenario always involved two PIT wins (beating KC and CIN) and DEN over CIN. Now we need KC to win at home next week vs SD also. Other possibilities would open up for us if the Texans can upset the Ravens tomorrow. Conversely, if the Chiefs and Ravens both win at 1:00 Sunday we'd be eliminated before our kickoff I believe.

Dangit, we really need this game. Come on Niners, man up!!!!

For the optimists, the current "default" scenario (all favorites winning their games the next two weeks) has us in if you just change our Week 17 game outcome to a W over the Pats. So, while we do need help, it's not like we need several lousy teams to pull off improbably upsets. As stated previously, realistically it comes down to PIT winning both games, DEN over CIN, and one SD loss in terms of help. For the pessimists, it's possible the Bills could be eliminated BEFORE KICKOFF at Oakland, that would happen if SD wins Saturday and KC and BAL both win their 1 pm games. So, that's one of several reasons why SF beating SD is important - it's not technically a "must" win for us, but the best case scenarios get less optimistic and the worst case scenarios get much worse with a SF win. But, I believe SF and PIT will both win, making this scenario moot.

You're 100% correct, we lose out to the Ravens in any tiebreaker situation unfortunately. We'd be 2-3 in common games and they'd be 3-2 (vs. MIA, SD, HOU, and CLE). My guess is ESPN's software doesn't include common opponent tiebreakers for all various combinations of teams that could be tied since that would be a huge pain to include. Simply put, we need 3 of the following 5 things to happen: SD loss, KC loss, CIN 2 losses, PIT 2 losses, BAL 2 losses. When you factor in the head to head matchups of KC-SD (eliminating someone) and CIN-PIT (putting someone in ahead of us), we need 2 of these 3 things to happen: the PIT-CIN loser loses their Week 16 game, the SD-KC winner loses their Week 16 game, or 2 Ravens losses. 2 Ravens losses is by far the least likely scenario. Fortunately for us, if all "favorites" win their games, we'd get the help we need (we'd need to win our 2 games of course). The favorites currently would be SF over SD, PIT over KC, BAL over HOU, DEN over CIN for this week, then PIT over CIN, KC over SD, BAL over CLE next week. Those results would put us in over CIN, SD, and KC. Based on the various scenarios and the likelihood of each result happening I give us a 29% chance of getting the help we need, which goes up to 40% if SF beats SD and falls to 17% if SD beats SF. The key games are really DEN beating CIN and SF beating SD.

Seems like the perfect time to link to my Jauron swan song Youtube clip:

Unless I'm really missing something here . . . the odds are 1 in 3200 that on the entire earth, at least one person will get hit (that there's a very high chance that NO ONE will get hit), NOT that each individual person has a 1 in 3200 chance of being hit (that there's virtually guaranteed to be mass casualties)!!!

I put together a Jauron is gone celebration song on YouTube if anyone's interested:

Sweet TD pass!!! I put together a Jauron is gone celebration song on YouTube if anyone's interested:

Should I be surprised that some people are critical of Shanahan right now? We just went from 3.5 brutal years of Jauron to wondering whether Ralph would go the cheap coordinator route to the Bills likely having interest in a 2-time Super Bowl winning coach with a solid career winning percentage. I understand saying that they won't actually land Shanahan, but I don't understand saying it wouldn't be a good move if they actually did get him.

I am sooooo happy right now. The Bills still have a long way to go, but for Ralph to admit there is a problem and take action like this is a big step in the right direction. Of course Gruden would be awesome, but there are several guys out there with coaching experience and past success that would get this team moving in the right direction.

I know it's still a month away, but I just bought 6 tickets for the Bills-Panthers game in Charlotte and I wanted to pass along that the best place I came across for reasonable ticket prices is the Ticket Exchange on the Panthers' website. Most of the tickets listed are in pairs or single seats, but the prices were much more reasonable than eBay auctions or StubHub. Go Bills!

The offense is so terrible that it makes our average to below average defense look better than it really is by comparison.