What do the Arizona Cardinals (10-4) want for Christmas? A spot in the 2021 NFL playoff field, for starters. We’ll see if they were naughty or nice this Saturday when they host the Indianapolis Colts (8-6) in a game rife with clinching scenarios and playoff implications. Let’s look at the NFL standings for both teams and run through the playoff scenarios for these squads in this week’s Colts vs. Cardinals showdown.
Clinching scenarios for Colts vs. Cardinals
The Cardinals’ magic number is down to one. They are one good result away from their first postseason appearance since 2015 — and the first since Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray joined forces in the desert. The Colts, meanwhile, will need to wait at least another week to punch their ticket.
How the Colts can clinch a playoff spot.
They cannot. But they can go a long way towards potentially doing so in Week 17. The Colts’ only realistic path to the postseason is as a Wild Card after the Tennessee Titans (10-5) beat the San Francisco 49ers (8-7) Thursday night to all but sew up the AFC South.
The odds are good they do it. FiveThirtyEight gives Indianapolis an 89% chance to be a playoff team heading into the weekend.
How the Cardinals can clinch a playoff spot
It’s as straightforward as it gets for Arizona: win and get in. The Cardinals will be at least a Wild Card team with a win and even a tie. But even with a loss, there are a number of ways they can secure their spot. Arizona would also clinch a playoff berth with:
- An Eagles (7-7) loss or tie OR
- A Vikings (7-7) loss or tie OR
- A Saints (7-7) loss or tie
Other Week 16 playoff implications for Colts, Cardinals
The Colts enter the weekend as the AFC’s No. 5 seed, by virtue of their conference record (7-3), which is the best of the four non-division leaders at 8-6. The Chargers are currently the sixth seed, the Bills are the seventh, and the Ravens are the eighth. With a win Saturday, the Colts’ playoff odds jump to 98% and make them all but impossible to catch by any of the 7-loss teams.
A loss would put a dent in their chances, but they’d still be 81% to get in and would almost assuredly do so with wins against the Raiders and Jaguars the last two weeks of the season. But it would make next week’s Indy-Vegas showdown hugely important.
The Cardinals don’t need to worry about what a loss would do to their chances of making the field. But their seeding would take a big-time hit. Arizona would have a three-in-four chance of hosting a first-round playoff game with a win.
But with a loss, the Rams (10-4) would be the new favorites to win the NFC West. If the Cardinals fall to the Colts, Los Angeles would control its own destiny in the division. A loss would also effectively eliminate the Cardinals from the one seed (those odds are already tiny).