Yeah, he stepped in, didn't he?

Both other playoff spots which could've been clinched today weren't, and are set for head-to-head Week 18 matchups.

• Shedeur Sanders could only lead the Browns to 13 points -- but when your defense gives up only six...  Tree, if Shedeur sucks that bad, what does that make COVIDIOT-8?  Just asking for a friend...  Welcome to Days of Our Steelers...
• That means Week 18, Steelers-Ravens in Pittsburgh for all the marbles.
• And hoo boy, that NFC South... The Buccaneers lost 20-17 to Miami, and that should've slammed the door there and gotten Carolina the situation, but Seattle slammed Carolina instead, 27-10.
• And that means Carolina goes to Tampa next week for the NFC South -- and if Tampa wins it, 8-9 wins the division!

So now we have the following as of 3:30 PM PST Sunday.

NFC:

1. Seattle clinches the #1 seed if Chicago loses to San Francisco tonight.
2. Seattle can do no worse than the #2 seed.
3. Either Chicago or Philadelphia goes in this spot.  Chicago clinches no worse than the #3 if they win tonight.
4. The Carolina-Tampa winner is the #4.
5. The two 11-4 NFC wildcards that are the #5 and #6 play prime-time this week.
6. So nothing is determined here at all, including that at least one of them can win the division, but they must win out and Seattle must lose to San Francisco next week.
7. Green Bay is the #7. 

AFC:

1. Denver has the edge on New England if they both go 14-3 due to common games record, so Denver wins the #1 with a win over the Chargers next week.  If Denver loses and New England wins over Miami, then New England gets the #1.  If Jacksonville (who needs a win or a Houston loss to Indianapolis to clinch the AFC South) wins over Tennessee and both Denver and New England lose, Jacksonville gets the #1 on the basis of a 10-2 conference record vs. 8-4 for the other two.
2. A win by New England means they can do no worse than the #2.  A loss by Denver and a win by Jacksonville means Jacksonville can do no worse than the #2 because Jacksonville beat Denver (or see above if it ends a three-way tie at 13-4).
3. Denver, Jacksonville, Houston, or New England, depending on who's the low division winner on the totem pole after next Sunday.
4. The Pittsburgh-Baltimore winner is the #4.
5. Unless Buffalo comes back, all three wild-card teams will be 11-5.
6. So nothing will be determined for these three spots.
7. Houston has a one-game advantage in conference record over Buffalo and the Chargers, so a win, at minimum, gets them the #5 (it could win them the division and perhaps throw the tiebreaker into a strength of victory/schedule scenario).

Still no official announcement.

Here are the known irrelevant games as of this moment for Week 18:

• Saints-Falcons
• Browns-Bengals
• Chiefs-Raiders
• Packers-Vikings
• Cowboys-Giants

So that means those games will probably get sloughed off into the early block.  Chiefs-Raiders could even get moved early Saturday because it's in Las Vegas and they don't usually like to do 10 AM Pacific starts out there.  The other four games will almost certainly be 1 Eastern starts. 

So if we had to guess right now:  Chiefs-Raiders and one of the two win and in games Saturday.  The four irrelevant games 1 Eastern Sunday.  You could well have an inverted Sunday schedule:  Four early games, the rest late.  The other win and in Sunday night, probably Steelers-Ravens.  They probably won't do a full inversion, but, at the very least, probably Bears-Lions and the two NFC West games late.