Thanks to Bijan Robinson\u2019s 239 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns, the Atlanta Falcons beat the Los Angeles Rams and kept the Carolina Panthers\u2019 options open for how they want to win the NFC South title. Option one, as always, is to beat or tie the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Saturday, January 3rd at 4:30 PM ET. Win or tie and they\u2019re in, it is that simple. Option two feels a little more Panthers. They can lose to the Bucs in the Week 18 and still win the NFC South if the Falcons also beat the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, January 4th at 1 PM ET.<\/p>\n
Option two ends up with three teams in a three-way tie atop the NFC South standings at 8-9. The first tie breaker is head-to-head record, which the Panthers would win and thus take the division title and the four seed on the NFC side of the playoff bracket.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know how much Panthers football you\u2019ve been watching this season, but one of this scenarios sounds sillier, more chaotic, and more Panthers than the other. I\u2019ll let you be the judge of which is which. Week after week, the Panthers have been on the cusp of locking this thing up and, week after week, they have found a way to kick the can down the road. Now they can leave their fate in the hands of the Falcons if they want.<\/p>\n
Panthers finish 8-8-1 or 9-7-1<\/p>\n
Current NFC playoff picture<\/p>\n
NFC teams eliminated from playoff contention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to Bijan Robinson\u2019s 239 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns, the Atlanta Falcons beat the Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[235,260,88181,2567,7,6,236],"class_list":{"0":"post-639621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-panthers","10":"tag-carolina-panthers-playoffs","11":"tag-carolinapanthers","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115806960876566852","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639621","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=639621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}