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| Cam Newton has the Panthers looking towards the playoffs. |
We've finally crossed the halfway point of the season, in that every team in the league has played more than half of their schedule. It's a bit unfortunate that it took that long before we finally got to the meat of the league's schedule, but we're not here to complain. We're happy people. Good football is finally here, and we're going to enjoy it.
We're starting to get some separation from the pack - there seem to be four sure-fire playoff teams in each conference: Kansas City, Denver, New England, and Indianapolis in the AFC, Seattle, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Carolina in the NFC. The AFC North is still (somehow) up for grabs, the NFC North has three teams within a game of each other in various states of infirm, and the Cowboys and Eagles will slap-fight each other for the right to be the No. 4 seed. Meanwhile, the bad teams seem to have entrenched themselves in terrible-ness, the only unknown left is which mediocre team(s) will rise to the occasion to snag a playoff berth and/or trip up a favorite looking to lock down a first-round bye.
Of those eight sure-fire (or, at the very least, overwhelmingly likely) playoff teams, there are a whopping TEN games between them over the next seven weeks. They are:
Chiefs at Broncos, 49ers at Saints, Patriots at Panthers (Week 11); Broncos at Patriots (Week 12); Broncos at Chiefs, Saints at Seahawks (Week 13); Panthers at Saints, Seahawks at 49ers (Week 14); Saints at Panthers, Colts at Chiefs (Week 16)
Weeks 15 and 17 have (seemingly) empty slates, but Week 17 could have two do-or-die games for playoff spots in the NFC North (Packers at Bears) and NFC East (Eagles at Cowboys). We're in for a good run.
