What the AFC Wild Card race looks like with 7 weeks left

The AFC South wasn’t too relevant Sunday after the Tennessee Titans stretched their divisional lead Thursday with a win and the Jacksonville Jaguars sat out with a Week 11 bye. What did get a shake up was the wild card race in the AFC.

With the Kansas City Chiefs as the only team in the conference with eight wins, there’s a crowded crop of teams battling for the three wild card berths. The Jaguars are distant afterthought, for now.

After Week 11, the Chiefs, Titans Miami Dolphins, and Baltimore Ravens are the divisional leaders. The rest of the teams in the conference stack up like this:

1. Buffalo Bills (7-3)
2. New England Patriots (6-4)
3. Cincinnati Bengals (6-4)
4. New York Jets (6-4)
5. Los Angeles Chargers (5-5)
6. Indianapolis Colts (4-6-1)
7. Jacksonville Jaguars (3-7)
8. Las Vegas Raiders (3-7)
9. Cleveland Browns (3-7)
10. Denver Broncos (3-7)
11. Pittsburgh Steelers (3-7)
12. Houston Texans (1-8-1)

The Jaguars are four games behind the Titans for the AFC South crown and have a lot of catching up to do if they hope to track down one of the three wild card berths.

The bright side for the Jaguars is that all three of the team’s wins (over the Colts, Chargers, and Raiders) were against AFC opponents. That’s why Jacksonville is at the top of the five-way tie for seventh, thanks to the conference record tiebreaker. The Jaguars also own a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Chargers and have a Week 16 matchup against the Jets still on the docket.

Of course, none of that matters if the Jaguars don’t finish the season on a tear.