Something foul is happening in the NFL right now, but it's not the officiating: It's the NFC South
There is something very foul happening in the NFL right now. It’s not something that requires people to be suspended, fined or reviewed at the owners' meetings, but there is cause for the league to take a moral stance against an entity that grows more wicked and dangerous by the week: the 2023 NFC South.
By rule, each division is represented by its champion in the playoffs with a home game, but it is simply distasteful for the league to allow that rule to apply to the NFC South. These teams are just playing around in the mud, waiting for the season to end to see who has the honor and privilege of getting absolutely flattened by the NFC East runner-up. With each week that passes, one thing becomes more certain about the bottom-dwellers that cover the southeastern portion of the NFL: Not a single one of these teams is even close to playoff-caliber.
Right now, the Buccaneers are the leaders in the NFC South with a 6-7 record, owning the tiebreaker over the Falcons … who also have a 6-7 record. The Falcons currently have a tiebreaker over the Saints … who are also sitting around at 6-7! Then there’s the Panthers, who were the first team mathematically eliminated from the playoffs last week and are on track to own the worst record ever in a 17-game NFL season.
The Buccaneers beat the Falcons despite Baker Mayfield's not eclipsing 100 passing yards until the fourth quarter. That’s the team currently leading this sad parade. It's a three-way, 6-7 tie at the top with a month to go until one of these teams gets a wet Burger King crown as it heads into guaranteed destruction in the wild-card round.
The easiest way to describe where the NFC South is right now is to look at what happened to Atlanta after the loss to Tampa Bay. The Falcons led the NFC South heading into the game, locking them into the fourth seed and the projected 19th overall pick in next year’s draft. With the loss, they are now the 10th seed in the NFC and projected for the 11th overall pick in the 2024 draft. These teams are only in playoff contention because they have to be by rule. Maybe this is the year the NFL needs to adopt a playoff committee instead of letting their tried and true formula work.
Of course, that would never happen, and it doesn’t actually need to happen to accommodate the NFC South, but it is hilarious to think that these teams might be better served by not winning their division and instead missing out on the playoffs. The fifth seed in the NFC is most likely coming down to the Cowboys or the Eagles based on their record right now. Both of those teams have a real chance to be double-digit road favorites in a wild-card game against the Buccaneers, Falcons or Saints. Whoever wins is essentially locked into the 19th pick in the draft (assuming a playoff loss) and gets rewarded with a first-place schedule next season, in which they'll have other division winners from across the league sprinkled into their schedule.
None of these teams is ready for that specific challenge in 2024 without a major retooling of how they currently operate. It would also be difficult to grab a potential franchise quarterback with fringe top-20 draft pick, which is something each of the NFC South contenders needs to look into this season.
Look, losing never feels good. Making the playoffs — even to get trounced in the first round — is a nice, short-term boost for a franchise, but these teams need the resources and luck to get better in a hurry. In the long run, it might be better to wind up with the higher draft pick because no one in this division is sniffing a Super Bowl this season. They need quarterbacks! Just about the whole division!
Somehow, the Panthers can’t even figure out a way to be competitive within this slopfest. Saints quarterback Derek Carr had 37 passing yards through the first three quarters of their win against the Panthers. Thirty-seven yards. The Saints won that game 28-6! They have fallen so low into the sewer that it’s difficult to believe they’ll be able to put a watchable product on the field for 2024. Bryce Young hasn’t been able to shine amid the chaos around him, and his rookie season has largely felt like a waste of time. The Panthers are, remarkably, several tiers below their competition in this division. That’s downright terrifying.
Falcons. Saints. Bucs. The saddest wild-card race anyone has seen in a while. Someone has to win, but none of them has the chops to go on a run or even really win a game once the postseason starts. Prayers up to whatever team wins this division. They’ll need it.
