GREEN BAY – It’s back! That’s right, with December here and the Packers on their bye week, Path to the Playoffs has returned.
For those not familiar, this is a weekly stretch-run segment on packers.com that lays out where the Packers stand in the playoff picture. Most importantly, it also indicates the upcoming game results that would be most beneficial for Green Bay, providing a road map for fans’ rooting interests in other games.
In Week 13, the Packers are 9-3 and 3½ games up in the NFC North over the 5-6 Vikings. Green Bay also is a half game back of 9-2 Arizona for the top record in the entire conference, which is a coveted spot as it carries with it the only postseason bye as well as home-field advantage throughout the postseason.
Starting with the division, to borrow a baseball pastime, the Packers’ magic number to clinch the NFC North is three. That means, from here on out, any combination of Green Bay wins and losses by the second-place team, currently Minnesota, totaling three will wrap up the division crown.
With that in mind, as Minnesota travels to Detroit (0-10-1) on Sunday, root for the Lions to get their first victory of the season and knock that magic number down to two.
Regarding the rest of the NFC playoff picture, here’s the current seeding order of the top five teams in the conference based on overall records:
1. Arizona (9-2), 2. Green Bay (9-3), 3. Tampa Bay (8-3), 4. Dallas (8-4), 5. LA Rams (7-4).
