NFL playoff picture after Week 6: the 49ers and Vikings can afford two losses, 4-2 brings a clinch number in the NFC but not the AFC, and nobody can clinch in Week 7

Two clubs can now lose twice and still clinch a playoff place without help. San Francisco, 6-0 after beating Washington 23-17 on Monday night, has a clinch number of 9 with 11 games left. Minnesota, 5-0 after its bye, has 10 with 12 left. After Week 5 no club had more than one game to spare. Six clubs can afford at least one loss: those two, Kansas City at 11 with 12 left, Jacksonville and the Giants at 10 with 11 left, and Carolina at 11 with 12 left. Ten clubs have a clinch number of any kind, up from eight.

Every figure here is from the table at the end of Week 6, which closed with San Francisco's win over Washington on Monday night, Tuesday, October 20 in Korea. All 14 games are final. Cincinnati, Detroit, Miami and Minnesota had the bye. Three clubs are unbeaten, San Francisco at 6-0 and Kansas City and Minnesota at 5-0, and two are winless, Miami at 0-5 and the Chargers at 0-6. No Week 7 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 play each other, and a level finish is always scored against the club being asked about.

The Week 6 results, winners first: on Thursday night Denver beat Seattle 17-14. On Sunday Houston beat Jacksonville 34-31 in London, Chicago won 31-23 in Atlanta, Cleveland beat Baltimore 13-10, Tennessee won 26-20 in Indianapolis, New England beat the Jets 26-19, New Orleans won 34-27 against the Giants, Carolina won 25-14 in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh won 26-19 in Tampa Bay, Arizona won 18-16 against the Rams, Kansas City beat the Chargers 22-6, Buffalo won 33-30 in Las Vegas and Green Bay beat Dallas 23-13. San Francisco's 23-17 win over Washington closed the week.

Where the short numbers come from. San Francisco's 9 is also its division number. Nine more wins make 15-2, and nobody else in the NFC West can get there: Seattle, at 3-3, tops out at 14-3, and Arizona and the Rams, at 2-4, at 13-4. Minnesota's division number is 11, not 10, because Green Bay and Chicago at 4-2 and Detroit at 3-2 can each still reach 15-2, so the North takes 16-1. A place takes only 15-2: the only NFC clubs that can reach 15-2 are San Francisco, Green Bay, Chicago, Detroit and Carolina, and those five, Minnesota and the NFC East winner make exactly the seven. Kansas City needs 16-1 to be sure of the West, 11 more wins, because Denver, at 4-2, can still reach 15-2. Jacksonville lost to Houston, but Indianapolis lost too, so 14-3, 10 more wins, still takes the South: Indianapolis and Houston top out at 13-4 and Tennessee at 12-5. The Giants lost to New Orleans and still went from 11 to 10, because Philadelphia, Dallas and Washington all lost as well. At 13-3-1 the Giants finish ahead of anything Philadelphia or Dallas can reach, 13-4, and of Washington's 12-4-1. Carolina, 25-14 winners in Philadelphia, would take the South at 14-3 for the same reason, with Atlanta and New Orleans topping out at 13-4.

The two conferences now split differently at 4-2. In the NFC, Green Bay and Chicago are 4-2 with 11 left and both have a clinch number of 11, every game left; Detroit, 3-2 with 12 left, has 12. At 15-2 each of them would be one of the seven clubs described above. In the AFC, nine clubs can still reach 15-2 or better: Kansas City, Buffalo, Jacksonville, the five other 4-2 clubs, and Cincinnati at 3-2 with 12 left. A 4-2 club at 15-2 would have eight rivals there for the other six places. Cleveland, New England, Denver, Pittsburgh and Baltimore are all 4-2 with no clinch number, and each has a tragic number of 11. Buffalo, at 5-1, needs all 11 of its games for both numbers for the same reason: at 15-2 it would be one of those nine, and New England can still reach 15-2 in the East.

Our Week 5 piece set out what Week 6 could do to every number, and each of those lines held. In the AFC four of the five 3-2 clubs in action won, so none of them picked up a clinch number and Las Vegas, the one that lost, went to a tragic number of 10. Cincinnati lost its clinch number during its bye, Baltimore lost both of its numbers in Cleveland, and Kansas City, Buffalo and Jacksonville landed on 11, 11 and 10. In the NFC two of the three 3-2 clubs in action won, so Green Bay and Chicago picked up 11 and Seattle went to a tragic number of 11. San Francisco went to 9, Minnesota to 10 during its bye, the Giants to 10 despite losing, and Carolina, with Atlanta beaten, to 11 with no tragic number.

If the season ended today, the AFC's division leaders would be Kansas City, Buffalo, Jacksonville and Cleveland, seeded in that order, with New England, Denver and Pittsburgh as the wild cards and Baltimore first out. Kansas City would have the bye, and the wild-card round would be Buffalo against Pittsburgh, Jacksonville against Denver and Cleveland against New England. The NFC's would be San Francisco, Minnesota, Carolina and the Giants, with Green Bay, Chicago and Detroit as the wild cards and Seattle first out. San Francisco would have the bye, and the games would be Minnesota against Detroit, Carolina against Chicago and the Giants against Green Bay. Equal records are ordered by ESPN's seeding, which applies the league's tiebreakers; we do not compute the tiebreakers ourselves. Cleveland leads the North at 4-2 ahead of Pittsburgh and Baltimore on that ordering.

Week 7 cannot put a zero anywhere. Give any club a win and every other club in its conference a loss, the most favourable week it could have, and the smallest clinch number anywhere is 7, San Francisco's. Give it a loss and every rival a win, and the smallest tragic number is 5, the Chargers'. So nobody clinches and nobody is eliminated in Week 7. At the bottom the Chargers, 0-6, have 7, Miami and Tennessee 8, and Tampa Bay, Indianapolis, Houston and the Jets 9. The Week 7 fixtures are on the schedule page, and the what-if page lets you pick results within each conference and watch the 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 tie counts as half a win in the record, as in the league table. 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. 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. Club pages: San Francisco, Minnesota, Kansas City, Green Bay and Buffalo.