The 8–5 Jets, fresh off an impressive 30–8 victory over the punchless Titans, have now won three straight games—the longest winning streak this franchise has seen in four years.
It’s been even longer, five years, since Gang Green advanced to the postseason. And if the regular season ended today, the Jets—in a three-way tie with the Steelers and Chiefs for the two wild-card spots—would be in.
Yet if the Jets, Steelers, and Chiefs all win out, it would be New York that'd be left without a chair when the music stops.
Confused? Welcome to the NFL’s complicated tiebreaker system. A set of rules that requires a Ph.D. in decoding ridiculousness.
Here’s how it plays out.
Todd Bowles’s 8–5 team is 6–4 in the AFC (this comes into play later) and has three games remaining: at Dallas, New England, and at Buffalo. If the Jets take care of business and win out, they'd have an 11–5 record, a six-game winning streak, an 8–4 conference record, an ecstatic fan base, but no guarantee of making the postseason.
Why? Because if both the Chiefs and Steelers also win out, we'd go to the NFL’s multiteam wild-card tiebreaker.
