The two teams the Jaguars can play in the Wild Card round
By Asher Fair
There are two teams that could potentially travel to Jacksonville to take on the Jaguars in the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs.
By completing a sweep of the Tennessee Titans for the first time since 2006, the Jacksonville Jaguars clinched the AFC South for the first time since 2017 on Saturday night at TIAA Bank Field.
The 20-16 victory clinched the Jaguars (9-8) their first winning record since 2017, and it secured them the No. 4 seed in the AFC playoffs.
As AFC South champions, Doug Pederson’s squad is set to play a home playoff game during next weekend’s Wild Card round, either on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. They are set to take on whichever team ends up securing the No. 5 seed, which goes to the top non-division winner in the AFC.
There are just two teams which remain eligible to clinch the No. 5 seed on Sunday afternoon: the Los Angeles Chargers and the Baltimore Ravens.
The Chargers (10-6) currently occupy the spot over the Ravens (10-6) due to the fact that their 7-4 AFC record is one game better than Baltimore’s (6-5).
So Los Angeles can clinch the No. 5 seed by beating the Denver Broncos on Sunday afternoon. They can also clinch it if Baltimore loses to the Cincinnati Bengals in an early afternoon game that is slated to take place beforehand.
Baltimore can only jump into the No. 5 seed by beating Cincinnati and having Los Angeles lose or tie to Denver, or by tying with Cincinnati and having Los Angeles lose to Denver.
FiveThirtyEight gives the Chargers a 65% chance to beat the Broncos, and it gives the Ravens just an 18% change to beat the Bengals.
To save you the trouble of doing the math, the Chargers have a 93.7% chance to secure a date with the Jaguars next weekend, while the Ravens have a 6.3% chance to do so.
The Jaguars beat both the Chargers and the Ravens earlier in the season, demolishing the former at SoFi Stadium by a score of 38-10 back in Week 3 and beating the latter at home by a score of 28-27 in Week 12.