New York Giants

According to Playoff Simulator, Giants In Catbird's Seat

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Right here, right now, the New York Times believes that the New York Giants have a 80 percent chance of making the NFL playoffs.  You may, however, want to take this information with a grain of salt. After all, this newspaper rated Hillary Clinton an overwhelming favorite in the presidential sweepstakes. How did that prediction turn out?

If you have a few minutes, and you like math, you may want to head over to “The Upshot”. It’s an interactive tool that helps decipher the playoff possibilities for the New York Giants. Needless to say, with five weeks left in the season, the possibilities are endless.

You may ask: how many possibilities are there?

Here’s as good an answer as you’re going to get right now. “With 79 games remaining, there are about 604 sextillion different ways the N.F.L. regular season could end. How many of those put the Giants in the playoffs? Far too many to check by hand.”

Narrowing The Playoff Simulator

According to the simulator on Nov. 30, 2016, “The Giants make the playoffs in 80 percent* of scenarios.” Those seem to be pretty good odds.

And the most likely scenario, right now, is that the G-Men are the fifth seeded team, or first Wild Card. That comes in at 51 percent. The sixth seeded team, or second Wild Card, comes in at 17 percent.

They have an eight percent chance of being the overall number 1 seed, and a less than one percent chance at the top draft pick (I can’t explain why that is not zero percent).

If the Giants win this weekend, then the probability of making the playoffs rises to 91 percent. If they lose, then the probability of missing the playoffs decreases by seven percent to 27 percent.

How is this done?

According to the Upshot, “Most calculators force you to choose the winners of each remaining game. Here, you can choose the outcomes of just a few games and see how your team’s chances grow or shrink.”

All in all, it seems like only an epic collapse will keep the Giants out of the post season.

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