{"id":618006,"date":"2025-12-21T21:34:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T21:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/618006\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T21:34:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T21:34:16","slug":"panthers-playoff-picture-where-carolina-stands-after-week-16-vs-buccaneers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/618006\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers playoff picture: Where Carolina stands after Week 16 vs. Buccaneers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Panthers needed a win today to solidify their contention for the NFC South title and the fourth seed in the NFC for the 2025-26 NFL Playoffs. They scraped that win off of the skin of their teeth and now only have to repeat the process against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Tampa in Week 18 to stamp their ticket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">That isn\u2019t the only way they are going to make the playoffs, but it is the most likely way. Below are the Panthers remaining scenarios for winning the NFC South. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from today is that the Panthers cannot be eliminated from the playoffs until the last week of the season.<\/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 Panthers needed a win today to solidify their contention for the NFC South title and the fourth&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[88181,7,6,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-618006","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":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115759708086733167","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618006","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=618006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}