The Baltimore Ravens defeated the Cincinnati Bengals by a score of 35-34 in a Thursday night thriller to open Week 10 of the 2024 NFL season. Not only did it send Ravens fans home happy, but New York Jets fans shut off their TVs with a smile, too.
Cincinnati’s loss drops them to 4-6 on the season, good for 9th in the AFC standings. One spot behind them, and now tied in the loss column, are the 3-6 New York Jets.
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With a win on Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, the Jets would tie the Bengals at 4-6. Thanks to Cincinnati’s loss on Thursday, the Jets own a better conference record than the Bengals (3-4 vs. 2-4), which would give New York the tiebreaker victory and put them ahead of Cincinnati in the standings.
There is now a path for the Jets to exit Week 10 in possession of the AFC’s 8th place spot. If the Jets win, and the Colts (4-5) lose on Sunday to the Buffalo Bills (7-2), there would be a three-way tie for 8th place between New York, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, which would go to New York.
New York would win the conference record tiebreaker over Cincinnati. Indianapolis would be tied with New York at 3-4 in the conference, moving the tiebreaker on to common games. There, the Jets would own the advantage over the Colts (2-3 vs. 2-4), putting them atop the three-way tie and in the AFC’s 8th place spot.
Even if the Colts defeat Buffalo this week to move to 5-5 and retain 8th place for the time being, the Jets would still control their own destiny to surpass Indianapolis in the standings as long as they beat Arizona, since the two teams will meet in Week 11 to determine the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Jets could defeat the Colts next week to tie them at 5-6 while claiming the tiebreaker.
Simply put, if the Jets win their next two games, they are guaranteed to enter their Week 12 bye in possession of 8th place in the AFC. The Bengals could have stood in the Jets’ way before Thursday night, but this scenario is now possible thanks to Cincinnati’s loss.
However, even if the Jets manage to pull into 8th place by either this Sunday night or next Sunday night, they would still have a ways to go before they could enter the playoff picture. They are currently two games back of the 7th-seeded Broncos (5-4), who also own the head-to-head tiebreaker over New York, which essentially makes it a three-game lead. The Jets must own an outright better record than the Broncos to surpass them in the standings.
Fortunately, the long-term outlook for New York’s pursuit of Denver is positive. Denver has the AFC’s fifth-hardest remaining strength of schedule (.557), while New York has the AFC’s third-easiest schedule (.435). That starts this weekend when Denver travels to Kansas City, where the Broncos are 9.5-point underdogs. So, if the Jets win in Arizona, there is a scenario where they finish Week 10 just one game back of Denver in the actual standings and two games back in the playoff chase, with seven games left to make up those two games and no other competitors standing in between the two teams.
In the long run, the Jets need either Denver or the Los Angeles Chargers (5-3) to go on a losing streak to leapfrog one of them into a playoff spot. There is still an absolute minimum of three weeks until the earliest point where the Jets would have a chance to get back into the playoff picture. There remains an extensive road ahead for these 3-6 Jets, even if they are now within arm’s reach of 8th place.
With that being said, Cincinnati’s loss on Thursday remains a crucial development because the Jets now have the ability to leapfrog both Indianapolis and Cincinnati as soon as this week. If they can handle their own business, the Jets might find themselves on the very top of the “In The Hunt” graphics while still having seven more games to push themselves just one spot higher, which is a gift from the gridiron heavens given how awfully they started the season.
It is reinvigorating for the Jets to have such a realistic chance of pushing for the playoffs despite winning two of their first eight games. If they were in the NFC, they would be down and out right now. A 3-6 record would currently place 14th in the conference, three full games behind the 7th seed. The Jets are fortunate to be playing in the significantly worse conference. This is a rare opportunity for a second chance, and they should not take it lightly.
Of course, it always comes down to handling your own business on the field. While it is okay for you and I to have some fun digging into these scenarios, the Jets themselves should pay them no mind. All that matters is going 1-0 every week. The rest will handle itself.
