NFL playoff picture after Week 3: Buffalo can now afford a loss, and only 6 teams can clinch by winning out

Buffalo can now lose a game and still clinch a playoff place without help. The Bills' clinch number is 13 with 14 games left, and it is the first clinch number on the board this season that is smaller than a club's whole remaining schedule. Every clinch number before it asked for everything: Jacksonville's 16 from 16 after Week 1, then nine clubs on 15 from 15 after Week 2. Five other clubs can still guarantee a place by winning out, Kansas City, Las Vegas and Jacksonville in the AFC and Minnesota and San Francisco in the NFC, and all five need all 14. After Week 2 there were nine clubs with a clinch number. Now there are six.

Every figure here is from the table at the end of Week 3, which closed with Chicago beating Philadelphia 27-7 on Monday night. All 32 clubs have played three games and all 32 have 14 left. The league has split five at 3-0, eleven at 2-1, eleven at 1-2 and five at 0-3, and no game has ended in a tie. No Week 4 game is in these numbers. The worst case behind a clinch number has every rival win every game it has left, without checking whether those rivals are scheduled to meet each other, and a level finish is always scored against the club being asked about.

Buffalo's number comes through its division, and two other clubs' results made it. On Sunday the Jets lost 24-31 at Detroit and New England lost 6-35 at Jacksonville, while the Bills beat the Chargers 24-16. The Jets and the Patriots are both 1-2, so neither can finish better than 15-2, and Miami at 0-3 cannot pass 14-3. At 16-1, then, Buffalo wins the East outright, and a division title carries the berth with it. At 15-2 the Jets could draw level and take the East on the tie this table always gives away, and the wild-card queue would already hold Las Vegas at 17-0 and Baltimore, Denver, Cleveland and Cincinnati at 16-1. So the clinch number is 13, and the division number is the same 13. Both fell by two in one week: one for the Bills' own win, and one because the line they have to clear dropped from 17-0 to 16-1. The two defeats are what moved that line. Count them alone, before Buffalo's own game, and the Bills were already on 14 with 15 games left.

The other five numbers are the whole schedule, for different reasons. Kansas City and Las Vegas are both 3-0 in the AFC West, with Denver 2-1 behind them after beating the Rams 30-26. At 16-1 either of the two can be passed by the other at 17-0, and then the wild-card queue is full: Denver and three of the four AFC North clubs reach 16-1 and are given every tie. The two meet in Las Vegas in Week 4. Jacksonville's 14 runs through the AFC South, as it did after Week 2. The Jaguars beat New England, Indianapolis beat Houston 19-17 to reach 1-2, and Houston and Tennessee are 0-3, so none of the three can pass 15-2 and a 16-1 Jacksonville wins the division outright; at 15-2 Indianapolis could draw level. In the NFC, Minnesota and San Francisco each have a 2-1 division rival who can reach 16-1, Detroit and Chicago in the North and Seattle in the West, so both need 17-0, and both hold a division number of 14 as well. San Francisco's is new. Seattle lost 31-33 at Washington while the 49ers beat Arizona 36-30, the West case our Week 2 piece described, and the number arrived in the shape that piece said it would: the whole remaining schedule. Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Seattle lost the clinch numbers they held after Week 2. Nine became six.

The AFC North is where the table has to choose. Pittsburgh beat Cincinnati 30-27, Baltimore beat Dallas 34-31 in Rio de Janeiro and Cleveland beat Carolina 21-18, so all four clubs are 2-1. Their point margins do not follow their places: Cincinnati plus 17, Baltimore plus 14, Pittsburgh minus 7, Cleveland minus 17. Every table on this site now puts equal records in one order, win percentage first and then ESPN's own seeding, which applies the league's tiebreakers; we do not compute those tiebreakers ourselves. That order makes Pittsburgh the division leader and the fourth seed, Baltimore the sixth seed as a wild card, and Cleveland and Cincinnati eighth and ninth, outside the seven. Our tables used to split equal records on point margin, which would have put Cincinnati first and Pittsburgh third. None of this moves a clinch or tragic number. All four carry a tragic number of 14 and no clinch number, because a 2-1 club that wins out finishes 16-1, and in the worst case a North rival takes the division on the tie while Las Vegas at 17-0 and Denver and the other two North clubs at 16-1 line up ahead of it for three wild cards.

At the other end, the NFC South has a game more room than anywhere else. Carolina, New Orleans and Atlanta are 1-2 and carry a tragic number of 14, the same as every 2-1 club in the league except Jacksonville, which has none. Every other 1-2 club carries 13, and so does Tampa Bay at 0-3, while the AFC's four 0-3 clubs carry 12. The reason is that no South club has won twice. If every other club loses out, a South club that wins once more finishes 2-15 and takes the division outright; a 1-2 club anywhere else finishes 2-15 level with the 2-1 clubs that lost out, and loses those ties. Spelled out, Miami, the Chargers, Tennessee and Houston are finished at 2-15 and still have a route at 3-14, and Tampa Bay is finished at 1-16 and still has a route at 2-15. Carolina, which lost 18-21 at Cleveland, holds the NFC's fourth seed at 1-2 on ESPN's seeding, and the Giants, 2-1 after beating Tennessee 12-7, are the first club outside. Point margin enters none of the arithmetic: Miami's minus 50 is the worst in football and carries the same 12 as Houston's minus 21.

Week 4 cannot put a zero anywhere. Whatever happens, no clinch number can fall below 11 and no tragic number below 10, so nobody clinches and nobody is eliminated. What it can change is shape, and every condition below was checked against all 177,147 ways the eleven games touching each conference can end, ties included. In the AFC, five of the six 2-1 clubs are in the same position: Pittsburgh and Cleveland, who meet in the game that opens the week, and Baltimore, Cincinnati and Denver, who play Tennessee, Jacksonville and San Francisco. The winner in Cleveland and each of the other three that wins picks up a clinch number of 13, unless all four win. Then none of them has one, because seven AFC clubs could reach 16-1 while the South's champion comes from below that line, which leaves six places for seven. A North club that is the division's only winner this week also picks up a division number of 13. Kansas City at Las Vegas is the week's only meeting of unbeaten clubs. The winner adds a division number of 13 and its clinch number becomes 12, and the loser still has a clinch number, 13, except when all four of those other games go the 3-1 way: then the winner needs 13 and the loser has no clinch number, only a tragic number of 13. A tie leaves both without a division number. Buffalo, home to New England, goes to 11 with a win if the Jets do not win at Chicago, to 12 with a win if they do, and to 12 with a tie whatever the Jets do; a loss leaves it on 13, which would then be its whole remaining schedule. Jacksonville's shape turns on its game at Cincinnati and on Indianapolis against Washington at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Sunday, October 4. A Jaguars loss with an Indianapolis win takes away both numbers and brings a tragic number of 13. A Jaguars win without an Indianapolis win, or a tie with an Indianapolis loss, takes both to 12. Anything else puts both on 13.

The NFC works the same way with five clubs. Philadelphia, the Giants, Detroit, Chicago and Seattle are the 2-1 clubs, playing the Rams, Arizona, Carolina, the Jets and the Chargers. Each that wins picks up a clinch number of 13 unless all five win, and then none of them does, for the same reason: seven NFC clubs could then reach 16-1, and no South club can. Minnesota, home to Miami, and San Francisco, home to Denver, go to 12 with a win, which would be the NFC's first clinch number below the whole schedule, and to 13 with a loss; the all-five case moves each of them one step the other way, 13 with a win and no clinch number with a loss. Their division numbers can reach 12 as well: Minnesota's with a win while neither Detroit nor Chicago wins, or a tie while both lose; San Francisco's with a win while Seattle does not win, or a tie while Seattle loses. In the East, Philadelphia or the Giants picks up a division number of 13 by winning while the other does not, or by tying while the other loses. The South comes down to Detroit at Carolina and to Atlanta at New Orleans, which closes the week. Whichever of Atlanta and New Orleans wins picks up a clinch number and a division number of 13, provided Carolina does not beat Detroit; Carolina gets them only by winning while Atlanta and New Orleans tie. Every other combination leaves the South without a number, and Tampa Bay, home to Green Bay, cannot get one. The Week 4 fixtures are on the schedule page, and the what-if page lets you pick results for upcoming games within each conference and watch the record order move.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number, also called a magic number, is the fewest further wins that guarantee a place even if every rival wins every game it has left. A tragic number is the further losses after which a place is impossible even if the club wins everything else and every rival loses. Zero means it is done, and a blank means the arithmetic cannot settle it yet. A level finish is scored against the club being asked about in both directions, so a clinch here can come later than the league's own announcement and an elimination can be declared on a tie alone. The official tiebreakers and the question of who plays whom are not part of the calculation. Every club's numbers are on the magic numbers page, the seeding and tiebreaker order on the playoff page, the conference tables on the standings page, and the working on the methodology page. The club this week's arithmetic turns on has its own page.