{"id":617216,"date":"2025-12-21T14:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T14:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/617216\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T14:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T14:32:11","slug":"carolina-panthers-playoff-picture-week-16-vs-buccaneers-and-the-nfc-standings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/617216\/","title":{"rendered":"Carolina Panthers playoff picture: Week 16 vs. Buccaneers and the NFC standings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Carolina Panthers loss to the New Orleans Saints in Week 15 technically narrowed their path to the playoffs, but the reality is that still have the same shot they had last week at the division title. Yes, they have been eliminated from wildcard contention, but that effectively happened when they lost to the 49ers on Monday Night Football. For now, their path is simple: beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and they win the NFC South.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">There are four likely records, plus two fun ones, that the Panthers could finish the season with. Two are simple in or out scenarios for the Panthers, the remaining four get a little complicated. Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n<p>Panthers finish 8-8-1 or 9-7-1<\/p>\n<p>Current NFC playoff picture<\/p>\n<p>NFC teams eliminated from playoff contention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Carolina Panthers loss to the New Orleans Saints in Week 15 technically narrowed their path to the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[88181,7,6,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-617216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-playoffs","8":"tag-carolina-panthers-playoffs","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-nfl-playoffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}