It’s never too early to talk about the playoffs when it comes to NFL football. It’s one of the things that makes the sport so special, every single game matters. This is propagated by the stat that floats around every football season around this time, the stat that lets 0-2 team’s fan bases know exactly how cooked their team is.
“History tells us that starting 0-2 is a damper on your chances of making it to the playoffs, but beginning the season 0-3 is closer to a death knell,” writes ESPN’s Bill Barnwell. Since 2002 — if we treat the seventh-best team in each conference as a playoff qualifier before the NFL moved to the 14-team postseason format in 2020 — 13.3% of teams that started 0-2 overcame their slow starts and made the postseason.
The good news for the New England Patriots, they took care of business last week on the road against a fellow wild card hopeful in the Miami Dolphins.
The bad news for the New England Patriots, the new look Pittsburgh Steelers are coming to town this weekend with their sites set on taking a playoff spot away from Foxboro.
Patriots’ Playoff Odds
Nothing has really changed since the beginning of the season as far as expectations are concerned for this Patriots team. The overreactions after Week 1 were to be expected after dropping a winnable game. The Week 2 win brought things to even as New England continues their march to nine wins.
Currently their odds sit at +130 to earn a playoff spot in the AFC. This essentially means it’s a toss up between the Pats, the Steelers, and whatever team winds up second in the South.
For Bleacher Report’s Brad Gagnon, he’s “selling” the Patriots‘ playoff hopes.
“Selling: You need to give me better odds than that considering how much this roster is still working through as part of a rebuild,” Gagnon writes. “They laid an egg in their home opener and have almost no shot in the division, while the AFC North and West are much more likely to produce wild-card teams.”
With the Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens all but guaranteed to win their divisions, and the AFC West on track to produce three playoff teams (Chiefs, Chargers, Broncos), this weeks matchup could prove to be massive at the end of the season.
‘Buying’ Steelers’ Playoff Odds
As of right now, it does appear as though these two teams are on a collision course for the 7th seed. Vegas has the Steelers‘ odds at +135, giving a very marginal nod to the Pats over Pittsburgh.
Gagnon believes the Steel Curtain provides a better faith argument.
Buying: I gotta say, considering the Burrow situation as well as the fact the AFC West could cannibalize each other, it’s surprising the Steelers are still getting plus odds on this,” Gagnon writes. “There’s a decent chance they’re in first place with a 3-1 record entering their Week 5 bye.”
It’s NFL football, nobody knows what’s going to happen. Teams will get injured and things will change.
However, head to head matchups will always be the tie breaker. This matchup has all the makings of a game that both of these teams can look back on at the end of the season and say “if only we won Week 3”.
Patriots’ Week 3 Matchup Has Massive Playoff Implications