Panthers lose to Buccaneers, but can strangely still make the playoffs

I was not at all surprised when the Carolina Panthers lost on a rainy night in Tampa Bay last night. What did surprise me was that they kept it as close as they did losing by a mere 2 points in the 16-14 barnburner of a game.

The game was kept good because neither team emerged as the dominator even though Tampa certainly did look like that was what they had in mind when they went up 10-0 in the 1st quarter.

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The game looked sloppy on both teams' part early on but to be as fair as we can be to the two worst teams, one of which will be in the playoffs, it was raining really hard and in case you have never played a ball sport in the rain, it is really difficult to hang on to a ball when it is wet. Therefore it shouldn't be a huge surprise that the game was filled with turnovers.

One however, was a lot worse than the others and it is being called "the worst flea flicker in NFL history."

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In case you don't know what a flea flicker is let me spell it out for you: It is where you give the ball to someone to run the ball to fake out the defense and hopefully pull in the secondary that is guarding the players downfield on passing plays. But the intention is for that person that you handed the ball to to pitch the ball back to the QB as soon as he reaches the line of defenders. Then, at that point, the recievers downfield have gotten themselves some space and the QB, who was already watching to see who ran the best route, can sometimes have a much better look at an open receiver.

That is not what happened here though. Rico Dowdle, one of the Running Backs for Carolina, completely lost his footing on the wet ground just as split second into the play and then instead of just taking it to the ground and losing a yard or two he still tried to toss the ball back and of course, it was off target just like it would be if you asked just about anyone in the world to throw something while they were falling, especially when they hadn't planned on falling. The ball fell pretty far away from Bryce Young who couldn't cover.

You can watch the 12 seconds of that play here if you want or maybe the link will pop up. I've never tried to link to "X" before.

https://x.com/i/status/2007600570643951909

This was the worst possible time for this to happen because it gave the Bucs the opportunity to wear down the clock for a full 6 minutes when there was only 11 minutes left in the game. Miraculously, Carolina still managed to punch it back for a TD on their next possession to bring the game to within 2 points at 16-14. . However, this left less than 3 minutes in the game and if you know anything about football, this is quite easy to burn off the clock. By the time Carolina got the ball deeply back on their own 3 yard line well out of field goal range, there was only 18 seconds left on the clock. 3 usual long-ball plays later, the Panthers kind of summed up their season by fumbling on the last play of the game. I suppose unlike their other turnovers throughout the season, this one didn't really matter at all since a field goal attempt would have been a 90 yarder, which I don't think is humanly possible even if you had unlimited amount of tries and nobody who weighs 300 lbs was running at you.

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Oddly though, and despite the fact that they totally don't deserve to, the Carolina Panthers can STILL advance to the playoff depending on what happens in the upcoming game with the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday afternoon.

Neither of these teams have any real incentive for winning the game because neither of them have any chance of a post-season. The only thing hinging on this game is that if Atlanta wins, Carolina will advance to the playoffs ahead of a team that they literally just lost to.

This could actually happen since it was just announced that New Orleans will be playing without their starting QB. It is a wise move for them to bench him because they don't need to potentially damage one of the only weapons that team has in a game that means very little.

A victory on the part of the Falcons, which by statistical metrics seems likely, would bring us to a very unusual situation where 3 of the 4 teams in one division have a record of 8-9 (8 wins and 9 losses throughout the season) at which point we have to revert to the rarely used rulebook about what the NFL does in the event of a tie. While it does happen from time to time that 2 teams are tied, it has to be extremely rare where all but one of the teams are tied.

The first rule of the tiebreak is that we next look at the head-to-head record vs all the teams involved. Since all teams in various divisions ALWAYS play all the teams in that division twice, this can normally sort the problem out without digging any further.

Surprisingly, Carolina has the best record against both Tampa and Atlanta with a record of 3-1 defeating Atlanta twice and winning one against Tampa.

If Atlanta loses the tiebreaker becomes more complicated and while I did read the rules twice, I still don't really understand it. But what the conclusion is, is that should Atlanta lose, Tampa Bay will advance to the playoffs.

No matter what happens though, it is less-than-glorious way to enter the playoffs. The bad news for whoever it is that ends up getting through is that they will be forced to play against the 49ers who at least most of the time, look like a much better team than either. I will say this though, Tampa beat San Francisco back in October whereas Carolina looked sluggish and stupid against them in November.

I don't recall very many points in my life where the advancement of my team in any sport depended on a game where my team wasn't even involved, so this could be interesting.