The way I understand the playoff picture...

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

This Arizona game is a gravy game. It's not critical to our chances at a playoff spot, but it would really help.

True, sort of. No game is hugely more important than than another, but the critical thing is to win 3 of 4.

Originally Posted by Direckshun

I've been noodling down about a dozen scenarios, and the Chiefs must beat Oakland, Pittsburgh, and San Diego to get to 8-4 in AFC play, which would make the Chiefs virtually tie-breaker proof against any AFC wild card team.

A whole dozen out of 2^64? Wow. I recommend looking at about the 5000 most likely scenarios and go from there. But you are basically correct that getting to 10-6 wiht the last loss coming against Arizona gets us to a 97% chance of making the playoffs.

Originally Posted by Direckshun

This is a bit jumbled, but there's virtually no world where we lose to Oakland, Pittsburgh, and/or San Diego and survive to the postseason. But we can lose against the Cards and still comfortably get there by winning all three.

Complete hogwash. If we get to 10 - 6 with a loss to the following teams the odds of us making the playoffs are:

Pittsburgh: 82%
Oakland: 95%
San Diego: 63%