The Jacksonville Jaguars won on Thursday night and moved up in the AFC standings. With the Pittsburgh Steelers on a bye, the Jags’ position will be at least third by the end of the weekend, and they can move into second and a tie for first place if everything goes their way.
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Here are the standings as we stand now, then we will get into the rest of the weekend.
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1. Buffalo Bills (6-1)
2. Denver Broncos (6-2, 3-1 AFC)
3. Jacksonville Jaguars (6-2, 5-2)
4. Pittsburgh Steelers (6-2, 3-2 AFC)
5. Kansas City Chiefs (5-2, 5-1 AFC)
6. Cincinnati Bengals (5-2, 4-2 AFC)
7. New England Patriots (5-3, 5-1 AFC)
8. Cleveland Browns (5-3, 3-3 AFC)
9. Las Vegas Raiders (4-4)
10. Baltimore Ravens (4-5)
11. Houston Texans (2-5)
12. New York Jets (2-6, 2-3 AFC)
13. Indianapolis Colts (2-6, 1-5 AFC)
14. Miami Dolphins (1-6)
15. Tennessee Titans (1-7)
16. Los Angeles Chargers (0-7)
The Jaguars, Broncos, and Steelers all go in together and while they will all play each other eventually, that hasn’t happened so we skip the head-to-head-to-head tiebreaker. The tiebreaker moves to conference record where the 3-1 Broncos best the 5-2 Jaguars and the 3-2 Steelers. Denver is the two seed.
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The Broncos and Steelers haven’t played each other yet, so the AFC record is applied again here and the 5-2 Jaguars slip ahead of the 3-2 Steelers. Jacksonville is the three seed and Pittsburgh is the four seed.
The Steelers are on a bye, but the Jaguars are already ahead of them.
The Broncos can lose to the Carolina Panthers and fall to 6-3.
The Buffalo Bills, though, can’t fall behind Jacksonville. The Bills could lose to the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night to fall into that 6-2 tie, but they are 5-1 in the AFC and that isn’t going to change. The highest the Jaguars can get is second behind Buffalo — for now.
