Playoffs? Playoffs! Postseason picture sharpens, but 30 separate outcomes are still out there

Week Seventeen saw the CFL standings and the race for postseason berths become much clearer, but there's still a lot of uncertainty left. In the West, the top spot is locked in, but there's still a race to see who finishes second, who finishes third and if the fourth-place team can cross over to the East. In particular, the B.C. Lions could wind up in second, third, fourth and crossing over, fourth and out of the playoffs, or dead-last in the division. The East Division has even more potential for chaos, with three teams that can finish first or miss the postseason entirely.. With just three weeks left in the regular season, we can start to get a picture of the potential playoff scenarios and how they look.

Out West, the Calgary Stampeders locked up first place in the division by beating the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 33-23 Saturday to improve to 13-2, and the Edmonton Eskimos improved their hold on second by knocking off Saskatchewan 24-19 Sunday and boosting their record to 11-5. (The Riders can finish with the same record as the Eskimos, but Edmonton now holds the crucial season-series tiebreaker; however, the B.C. Lions could claim second if they win the rest of their games and Edmonton loses the rest of theirs.) Saskatchewan has also clinched a playoff berth, but the question's if that will come as the third-place team in the West or as a crossover team headed East. The Lions are also getting closer to locking down a playoff berth, but they're not quite in for sure yet, and even the Bombers still have a faint hope.

In the East, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats moved into first place Friday by beating the Ottawa Redblacks 16-6, but the Montreal Alouettes matched them with a 20-12 win over the Toronto Argonauts Saturday. That leaves Hamilton and Montreal tied for first at 7-8 and Toronto a game back at 6-9. All three teams could still finish first or miss the postseason entirely. The only certainty in the division is that the 2-13 Redblacks have been eliminated.

How many potential scenarios remain in play? If we ignore the (very rare) possibility of ties, we can works this out. This is a question of permutations, as the order of each team's wins and losses matters. The outcome to choose from in each game is two-fold (win or loss), but this is a permutation with repetition (choosing win or loss doesn't mean it can't be chosen again), so the formula is just n^r. For teams with three games remaining, there are 2^3 (or eight) possible outcomes. Here's how those outcomes would look for the Montreal Alouettes:

There are eight possible outcomes for the six teams with three games remaining, and 2^2 (or four) for the three teams with two games remaining (Edmonton, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg). That leads to a total of 48 outcomes for teams with three games left plus 12 outcomes for teams with two games left. We then divide that by two (as each game also has a loser, this eliminates the repeated outcomes; a Montreal loss versus Hamilton is also a win for the Tiger-Cats) to get a total of 30 possible ways to resolve the league's remaining games.

Of course, not all of those 30 outcomes would lead to different playoff seeds. For example, consider the B.C. Lions. They're 8-7 and have remaining games against Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary. If B.C. loses all three of their remaining games but Toronto loses at least two of their final three, B.C. finishes fourth in the West (8-10) and crosses over thanks to having a better record than the 7-11 Argonauts. That exact seeding outcome could also be reached by B.C. winning one or two, Saskatchewan keeping pace (the Lions hold that tiebreaker, so the Riders need to finish ahead of them) and Toronto winning one in the final week against Ottawa, but staying behind Montreal and Hamilton. Similarly, with B.C. and Saskatchewan not playing each other, B.C. W-L-L, L-W-L and L-L-W all produce the same Lions-jumping-Riders effect if Saskatchewan goes L-L-L. Those are discrete outcomes from the perspective of the actual wins and losses, but they lead to the same results.

Still, there are a lot of potential seeding results left. We generally know which teams are likely in (Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatchewan, 2/3 top East teams and B.C.), but there are still some question marks on the margins (other options include 3/3 top East teams and no B.C., or 2/3 East teams and Winnipeg/no B.C. if the Bombers win at least two and the Lions lose their remaining games), and the specific seeds have yet to be determined. The final three weeks are going to be vital for the CFL's postseason picture. Who's in? We're going to find out.