A look at Broncos’ path to No. 1 seed and why Raiders game has significant weight

The Denver Broncos, after a thrilling road win against the Washington Commanders on Sunday night, only got to enjoy their latest perch atop the AFC for about 24 hours.

The New England Patriots defeated the New York Giants on Monday night and moved to 11-2, pushing them a half-game ahead of the Broncos (10-2) in the race for the AFC’s No. 1 seed and the first-round bye that comes with it. Finally, though, the bye week has arrived for New England. That means Denver can move right back into a tie if it can finish a regular-season sweep of the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.

That’s not the only reason, though, that Sunday’s matchup is critical for the Broncos in their pursuit of the top seed. Denver and New England have been matched in the standings for the better part of the last two months. Obviously, one of those teams could finish with a better record at season’s end and claim the No. 1 seed. It’s well within the realm of possibility, though, that those teams finish with the same record — and it’s in that scenario where a win in Las Vegas would be particularly critical for the Broncos.

A quick recap of the tiebreaker scenarios. The first is the head-to-head record. It’s easy and clean. It also has no bearing on how things could play out in a race between the Broncos and Patriots. They don’t play each other this season, so the tiebreaker is irrelevant. So is the division-record tiebreaker, which would only apply if the two tying teams are, well, in the same division.

That means the first relevant tiebreaker if the Broncos and Patriots finish with the same win-loss mark is conference record. Both teams are 6-2 against AFC opponents. The Broncos play four more conference games among their final five (at Raiders, vs. Jacksonville Jaguars, at Kansas City Chiefs, vs. Los Angeles Chargers). All four of the Patriots’ remaining games, which come after their Week 14 bye, are against AFC foes (vs. Buffalo Bills, at Baltimore Ravens, at New York Jets, vs. Miami Dolphins).

How do those remaining schedules impact the potential conference tiebreaker scenario? Let’s say the Patriots finish 13-4. That would mean their conference record ends at 8-4 since they only have AFC opponents remaining. Now, let’s say the Broncos also finish 13-4, but one of their remaining two losses in that scenario comes against the Green Bay Packers, instead of both coming against AFC teams. Denver would then finish with a 9-3 mark in conference games and therefore earn the No. 1 seed by virtue of that tiebreaker. If both teams lose only one more game, the Broncos would either win the conference-record battle (this assumes their one loss is to Green Bay) or tie it (loss to anyone else).

If both teams do finish with the same overall and conference records, the next tiebreaker would be winning percentage against common opponents. This tiebreaker requires a minimum of four common-opponent games. The Patriots and Broncos will finish the regular season with six such games against five opponents: the Raiders, Tennessee Titans, Jets, Giants and Cincinnati Bengals. The Broncos are 5-0 against those opponents, with Sunday’s game against the Raiders being their sixth and final game within this particular set. The Patriots are 4-1 in those games, their lone loss coming in Week 1 against the Raiders at home. The fifth game in the common-opponent set for New England comes against the Jets in Week 17.

That’s what makes Sunday’s game so critical for the Broncos. If they beat the Raiders, they’ll be a perfect 6-0 in common-opponent games, a mark New England won’t be able to match. Put another way, if the Broncos emerge from Las Vegas with a 10th straight win, they will have secured the tiebreaker advantage over New England in the race for the No. 1 seed. That would mean that as both teams entered the final four-game stretch of their schedule, the Broncos would nearly need to match the record the Patriots produced in order to edge them for the No. 1 seed.

There are certainly other teams that could enter the mix if the Broncos and Patriots lose a couple of games. The Bills, for example, could win out and get to 13-4, giving them a chance to vie for the No. 1 seed. The Jaguars or the Indianapolis Colts could also get to 13-4 by winning out, though that quest is complicated by the fact that those AFC South rivals still face each other twice.

At present, this looks like a two-team race. The Patriots currently have a 59 percent chance to claim the No. 1 seed, according to The Athletic’s playoff simulator. The Broncos sit at 33 percent, due to the fact that each of their remaining four games comes against teams with a record of .500 or better. No other team currently has better than a 3 percent chance of claiming the AFC’s top seed, so this is a Broncos-Patriots battle until it isn’t.

If the Broncos can beat the Raiders on Sunday, they’d still have to navigate a difficult final month of the season in pursuit of a first-round bye, but they would also have a critical tiebreaker at their disposal. A win would also go a long way toward helping the Broncos achieve their first stated goal of the season: winning the AFC West. The simulator gives the Broncos a 91 percent chance of claiming their first division title in 10 years if they win in Las Vegas.