The math has finally gone to bed
With three games left to play in the 2024 NFL season, the Carolina Panthers have all but locked in a top ten pick in the 2025 NFL Draft with their loss to the Dallas Cowboys yesterday. The loss also officially eliminated them from the 2024 playoffs by making it mathematically impossible for the now 3-11 team to win the NFC South.
The Panthers currently are in line for the fifth overall pick amidst a raft of four other 3-11 teams, so their final draft position is going to be hard to predict until the season is over. They could technically still pick as high as 14th if the Miami Dolphins, the Indianapolis Colts, the San Francisco 49ers (all 6-8) and the Atlanta Falcons (6-7 and the Panthers Week 18 opponent) all lose out, along with a small army of lesser teams.
It’s not impossible, but it is unlikely that any of the above scenarios play out. First, the Panthers aren’t winning out. Second, only the 49ers have a murderer’s row left on their schedule. The Colts will pick up one of their games against the Tennessee Titans, the New York Giants, and the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Dolphins have their quarterback again and will beat possibly all of the 49ers, the Cleveland Browns, and the New York Jets. The Falcons play the Las Vegas Raiders tonight and are still technically fighting for the NFC South crown one win from any of these teams is all it takes for them to be out of the Panthers reach. One win from all of them over the next three weeks guarantees the Panthers’ top ten pick.
If the Panthers win out and the 49ers lose to the Dolphins, the Detroit Lions, and the Arizona Cardinals, then we might get to dive into a strict parsing of the NFL’s tie breaking procedures to see who gets to pick 10th and who gets to pick 11th. That is assuming that none of the four or five win teams eclipse six wins.
The bottom line is that Panthers fans can rest assured that their seventh consecutive losing season will guarantee the opportunity to draft a blue chip player in April who will have the potential to help lift this poverty franchise back into the lower middle class it has been so desperately pursuing.
Congratulations to us all.