NFC South power rankings, Week 15: Each team's path to the 2024 playoffs
For the first time since Week 5, a new team has ascended to the top of the NFC South. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers now control the throne and their destiny to an automatic playoff spot.
The other three teams are unlikely to play into wildcard territory, putting the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints on notice to either catch the Buccaneers or start booking some tickets to Cancún for January. The Carolina Panthers would probably not be critiqued for turning most of their energy towards the 2025 draft.
In this week’s NFC South power rankings, we’ll be examining each team’s path to the playoffs and how likely it is they come to be.
All percentages are courtesy of ESPN’s Football Power Index.
NFC South power rankings entering Week 15 of the 2024 season
4. Carolina Panthers
- Make playoffs: <1%
- Win division: <1%
Though not mathematically eliminated thanks to the overall weakness of the NFC South, the Carolina Panthers’ odds of winning the division are so low that ESPN filled their number in as a flat zero.
To get to the postseason, the Panthers would need to win every remaining game on their schedule and hope everyone else loses the rest of the way. It doesn’t take a professional statistician to know that is not going to happen.
Yet has it ever felt so good to be a 3-10 team as it does for the Panthers right now?
Carolina has played entertaining football over the last three weeks, coming a drop away from upsetting the Philadelphia Eagles. With the season’s expectation set low early on and completely squashed by the start of November, three straight one-score defeats against playoff teams have left an overall impression that the Panthers are on a positive trajectory.
This is heightened by the upcoming game against the Dallas Cowboys, likely the only winnable game remaining on Carolina’s schedule. The oddsmakers in Vegas seem to agree, as the Panthers are favored for the first time in 33 games.
Despite the favorable expectations, the Panthers and head coach Dave Canales will likely approach this game the same way — letting the young guys sink or swim while they play meaningful reps against a team with elite talent up and down their roster.
Jalen Coker’s return from injury would greatly help this approach and provide second-year quarterback Bryce Young with an athletic vertical threat the team desperately lacked in Week 14. Adam Thielen cannot be expected to continue attracting over 50 percent of Young’s targets, and Xavier Legette’s drops continue to rear up at the worst possible times.