The Jacksonville Jaguars are through to the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs after an incredible comeback to beat the Los Angeles Chargers on Saturday night.
The Jaguars are now 5-2 all-time in Wild Card Weekend games and — after Monday — will be one of eight teams left with a chance to reach Super Bowl LVII.
Who they’ll play next weekend depends entirely on how the two other AFC playoff games shake out Sunday. At 1 p.m. ET, the second-seeded Buffalo Bills will host the seventh-seeded Miami Dolphins. In the primetime game, the sixth-seeded Baltimore Ravens will travel to play the third-seeded Cincinnati Bengals.
Between those two games are four possible outcomes and each one would line up a different opponent for the Jaguars in the Divisional Round.
Here are those four scenarios along with the likelihood that they come to fruition (based on FiveThirtyEight’s Elo forecast):
Jaguars @ Chiefs (80.75% chance)
If the higher-seeded Bills and Bengals both avoid upsets against backup quarterbacks and win Sunday, all the wild card teams in the AFC will be gone after the first round of the playoffs.
That’d leave the Jaguars as the lowest remaining seed in the conference. And that’d mean a daunting road trip to play the top-seeded Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium.
Given Buffalo has to beat the Skylar Thompson-led Dolphins and the Ravens are without Lamar Jackson, this is easily the likeliest scenario Sunday.
Jaguars @ Bills (14.25%)
If the Bills take care of business against Miami, but the Bengals lose to their AFC North rivals, Baltimore would be the lowest-seeded team in the Divisional Round.
With the Ravens set to travel to Kansas City, the Jaguars would instead head to Buffalo for a presumably frigid game against the Bills.
The Ravens appear to be the more likely wild card team to spring the upset Sunday, but the Jaguars playing in Buffalo still isn’t the likeliest scenario.
Jaguars @ Bengals (4.25%)
This scenario is essentially the same as the last one except the results are flipped.
If the Dolphins pulled off the upset, they’d take on the Chiefs and the Jaguars would meet the winner of the Ravens and Bengals. FiveThirtyEight says there’s an 85 percent chance that’ll be Cincinnati.
If that comes to fruition, the Jaguars will be traveling to Ohio to play the Bengals.
Ravens @ Jaguars (0.75%)
Here’s the best case, never-gonna-happen scenario for the Jaguars.
In the highly unlikely event that Skylar Thompson and Tyler Huntley lead their teams to wins over the Bills and Bengals, the Dolphins would go to Arrowhead Stadium and the Ravens would play the Jaguars at TIAA Bank Field.
Don’t count on it.
