Part one: The Packers win out.
They have games against Minnesota Thursday and at Chicago on New Years' Eve. Since the Bears have no playoff positioning to play for, two wins are possible.
Part two, the easy way: The Giants lose twice, and St. Louis and Atlanta lose once, along with Seattle winning at least once.
Part two, the hard way: The Falcons and Giants each lose once.
If that happens, there's a possibility that as many as seven teams could finish 8-8. Those are Atlanta, Carolina, the Giants, Philly, Saint Louis and San Francisco...and Green Bay.
If all that happens, it then goes to the NFL tiebreaking computer for the final wildcard spots.
What the NFL does is first eliminate teams from the same division..so you only have one team from each of the four divisions. If that happens, and the four teams turn out to be the Packers, Carolina, Philadelphia and San Francisco, the Eagles get the final spot.
If that doesn't occur, then the NFL uses conference record to break the tie.
Atlanta, Carolina, Saint Louis and San Francisco would each finish 6-6 in the conference.
The Packers would end up 7-5, and so would the Giants.
So then it could again be up to seven teams with it coming down to common opponents or even strength of victory....and there are complicated scenarios where the Packers can win that battle.
Now let us add this to it...say it's just a couple teams tied at 8-8...the Packers and any one of those other six teams. It comes down to head to head. If it's the Rams, it's not so good, because the Packers lost to them.
If it's San Francisco, we like the news...as the Packers beat them earlier this year.
