Predicting The Playoffs: Colts Have Easy Road, Patriots Need to Win This Week

With six weeks left in the season, there are still 21 teams who still have at least a slim chance of a playoff spot. It's way too pick which six teams will make it from both conferences (and if I knew for sure, it would make sense to hightail it to Vegas), but if you look at the remaining schedules for each of the playoff contenders, it quickly becomes clear which teams should make it and which team's fans have reasons to be upset, even if they don't know it yet.

So every week, we'll take a look at how the playoffs are shaping up. You'll see a lot of places list remaining strength of schedules as a percentage, and you'll see them here too, but that's only part of the story. A team that has the Titans (10-0), 49ers (3-7) and Raiders (2-8) on the schedule will rank as having an equally tough schedule when compared to facing the Vikings (5-5), Packers (5-5) and Bears (5-5). But given a choice, I'd much rather my team face the first schedule with two games that are likely wins. So we'll also look at how many games each team has left against winning teams and losing teams.