
If the season ended today, the Vikings would be in the playoffs. Hey, great idea. Let's just end it now!
Ah, it doesn't work that way. The Vikings, at 6-6-1, have a narrow half-game lead over three slumping 6-7 teams for the final wild card spot.
The Vikings' Week 2 tie at Green Bay remains a source of frustration for plenty of fans, but it might be enough to make a difference in getting in or staying home. And one thing the tie definitely did was make potential Vikings playoff scenarios pretty easy to figure out.
Only one other NFC team has a tie — Green Bay, of course! — and the Vikings hold the tiebreaker edge with the Packers in the event that they finish with the same record (entirely plausible, as you'll see in a moment) because the Vikings won the other head-to-head matchup. Unless another team has a tie in the final three weeks, the Vikings won't have to worry about complicated tiebreakers.
So with the help of FiveThirtyEight's prediction model, here are some scenarios for the rest of the season as it pertains to making the postseason:
*The site currently gives the Vikings a 57 percent chance of making the playoffs. That's probably better than Minnesota deserves for its .500 record, but that's the reality. Seattle, at 8-5, is a near-lock at 99 percent to make the playoffs. But no other team chasing Minnesota has better than an 18 percent chance (Eagles).
But the key component of the site is that it shows you how the percentages increase or decrease based on different outcomes.
*If the Vikings win their last three games against Miami (home), Detroit (road) and Chicago (home), they are guaranteed to make the playoffs at 9-6-1. Disregarding any other Chicago outcome other than losing to Minnesota, the Vikings would have a 9 percent chance of winning the division by winning out. But most likely they would be the Wild Card. They would need to win out and have Chicago also lose to Green Bay and San Francisco to win the NFC North. That would be the only way the Vikings could host a wild card round game, either as the No. 3 or No. 4 seed, depending on what record Dallas (as the likely NFC East winner) ends up with.