For a brief moment there on Sunday, the Cleveland Browns’ 2017 season appeared to be lost. The team was defeated by the Jacksonville Jaguars, moving its record to 0-10. Considering that no team has ever made the NFL playoffs with 10 losses, the result seemed to dash any remaining hope in Cleveland that the Browns would make a run.
Or did it?
It turns out, thanks to the assiduous investigations of a Redditor who goes by MrMolonLabe, the Browns are still in this thing: Provided that 46 different games go their way — including two ties — a hypothetical 6-10 Cleveland Browns can be the second AFC wild card team.
It’s all rather simple. First, Cleveland wins out — that’s the easy part.4 Then the Browns need the following: Week 12 wins from Kansas City, Tennessee, New England, Houston, Dallas and Carolina; Week 13 wins from New England, Denver, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Detroit and the Giants; Week 14 wins from Indianapolis, the Jets, Kansas City, New England, Chicago, Washington and San Francisco; Week 15 wins from Denver, Kansas City, Miami, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Minnesota and Dallas; Week 16 wins for Baltimore, Kansas City, San Diego, New England, Pittsburgh and Washington; and Week 17 wins for Kansas City, Indianapolis, New England and Cincinnati. Also, the Broncos and Raiders need to tie in Week 12, and the Bills and Dolphins need to tie in Week 17.
If all this happens, there would be four AFC teams with a record of 5-10-1 and five more at 5-11. The Patriots, Steelers, Chiefs and Titans would win their respective divisions, and the Jaguars would get the first wild card at 12-4. That leaves the Ravens and Browns tied for the last spot at 6-10. The Browns would win the tiebreaker because their Week 15 win over Baltimore would split the season series, and Cleveland would have a better record in the division.
Luckily, we happen to have forecasts for each of those games and can assign a probability for each of those discrete events based on each team’s current Elo rating.5 Here’s how it shakes out:
So you’re saying there’s a chance…
What the Browns need to happen to make the playoffs this year
| WEEK | OUTCOME | PROBABILITY | CUM. PROBABILITY | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | New England beats Miami | 90% | 90.00000000% | ||
| Kansas City beats Buffalo | 78 | 70.20000000 | |||
| Dallas beats L.A. Chargers | 68 | 47.73600000 | |||
| Carolina beats N.Y. Jets | 57 | 27.20952000 | |||
| Tennessee beats Indianapolis | 52 | 14.14895040 | |||
| Houston beats Baltimore | 32 | 4.52766413 | |||
| Cleveland beats Cincinnati | 16 | 0.72442626 | |||
| Denver-Oakland tie* | 0.35 | 0.00253549 | |||
| 13 | New England beats Buffalo | 76 | 0.00192697 | ||
| Jacksonville beats Indianapolis | 75 | 0.00144523 | |||
| Pittsburgh beats Cincinnati | 66 | 0.00095385 | |||
| Kansas City beats N.Y. Jets | 64 | 0.00061047 | |||
| Tennessee beats Houston | 63 | 0.00038459 | |||
| Denver beats Miami | 45 | 0.00017307 | |||
| Detroit beats Baltimore | 45 | 0.00007788 | |||
| N.Y. Giants beats Oakland | 32 | 0.00002492 | |||
| Cleveland beats L.A. Chargers | 14 | 0.00000349 | |||
| 14 | New England beats Miami | 81 | 0.00000283 | ||
| Kansas City beats Oakland | 77 | 0.00000218 | |||
| N.Y. Jets beats Denver | 42 | 0.00000091 | |||
| Wash. beats L.A. Chargers | 39 | 0.00000036 | |||
| Indianapolis beats Buffalo | 34 | 0.00000012 | |||
| Chicago beats Cincinnati | 31 | 0.00000004 | |||
| Cleveland beats Green Bay | 25 | 0.00000001 | |||
| San Francisco beats Houston | 21 | 0.00000000 | |||
| 15 | New Orleans beats N.Y. Jets | 82 | 0.00000000 | ||
| Minnesota beats Cincinnati | 77 | 0.00000000 | |||
| K.C. beats L.A. Chargers | 76 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Jacksonville beats Houston | 69 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Dallas beats Oakland | 52 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Denver beats Indianapolis | 45 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Miami beats Buffalo | 34 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Cleveland beats Baltimore | 21 | 0.00000000 | |||
| 16 | New England beats Buffalo | 87 | 0.00000000 | ||
| Kansas City beats Miami | 83 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Baltimore beats Indianapolis | 74 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Pittsburgh beats Houston | 67 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Wash. beats Denver | 64 | 0.00000000 | |||
| L.A. Chargers beats N.Y. Jets | 46 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Cleveland beats Chicago | 22 | 0.00000000 | |||
| 17 | New England beats N.Y. Jets | 88 | 0.00000000 | ||
| Kansas City beats Denver | 66 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Indianapolis beats Houston | 52 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Cincinnati beats Baltimore | 32 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Cleveland beats Pittsburgh | 6 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Buffalo-Miami tie | 0.35 | 0.00000000 | |||
| Total | 1 in 19,649,922,085,696,900,000 | ||||
Some are trickier than others: Elo can’t tell us the probability that a given NFL game will end in a tie because most NFL games do not end in ties. For that, we’ll need a better estimate: There have been 5 ties since 2012 over 1,440 games played,6 giving us a back-of-the-napkin probability of a specific game going to a tie as 0.35 percent, a rate of about 1 tie every 288 games.
Let’s set aside Cleveland’s two needed ties for a moment. Multiplying the Elo probability that each game breaks the Browns’ way, we anticipate there is a 1 in 238,559,677,617,755 chance that they will get that sixth wild card slot. The probability of having two specific selected games tie is a 1 in 82,369 chance. Combining those two chances, we anticipate that the Cleveland Browns have a 1 in 19,649,922,085,696,900,000 — that is 19.6 quintillion — chance of making the playoffs.
More to the point, the Browns have a probability of 32 percent to go 0-16 this year. But hey, anything is possible.
Check out our latest NFL predictions.