By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

At the beginning of the season it looked as though a battle would be taking place between the AFC West and the NFC South for NFL dominance.

As we approach the final stretch of the season it looks like the AFC West will only get one team into the playoffs and that basically because they have to have at least one representative.

On the other hand, the NFC South has held up their end of the preseason bargain and are looking to be the toughest division in football.

The question regarding the division isn’t whether or not they’ll get two teams into the playoffs, but could they possibly get three?

For the sake of argument let’s go ahead and assume that Philadelphia (East), Minnesota (North), Saints (South) and the Los Angeles Rams (West) will all win their respective divisions.

Obviously, anything can happen over the next few weeks, but my brain is fried on college football playoff hypotheticals, so I’m taking the easy way out on this one.

Were this scenario to play out, that would really leave only four viable teams for the remaining wild card spots: Seahawks, Lions, Falcons, and Panthers.

Seattle has probably the second easiest schedule of those four teams, but I just don’t have the confidence in the Mom to make a legitimate run at the playoffs.

Their offense has resorted to Russell Wilson running around in the backfield and making some sort of ridiculous throw to Doug Baldwin, off of a busted play.

With injuries plaguing the defensive side of the ball the “Legion Of Boom” has turned into the Legion of “We’d like to hit you hard, but we’re a little fragile right now, so we’re just going to push you and hope that you fall down.”

Could Seattle make the playoffs? Absolutely. Will they ultimately make me regret saying that they won’t make it? Without a doubt.

So, that leaves Detroit as the main threat to the NFC South sending 3 teams to the playoffs.

There are two things the Lions have going for them. First, they have a much easier schedule from here on out. of their remaining games, Detroit doesn’t play a single team with a winning record.

It’s almost the exact opposite for Atlanta and Carolina. Secondly, and this could be what propels Detroit into the playoffs, is that Carolina still has one more game against Atlanta and New Orleans, while the Falcons and Saints will play each other twice. Did I mention they both have a game with Minnesota still on their schedules, too?

The one thing that both the Falcons and Panthers do have on the Lions though, is that they are currently one and two games ahead of Detroit in the standings, respectively.

Not to mention, both teams hold the tiebreaker due to victories earlier in the season. So really, Atlanta has a two game lead and the Panthers’ lead is three. That’s difficult to overcome when you only have a handful of games left to make it happen.

The entire division has their work cut out for them is they hope to get three teams into the playoffs.

Detroit is in prime position to run the table while the entire NFC South will be dueling it out amongst themselves- reminiscent of what the SEC West used to be years ago.

Regardless, ¾ of the NFC South has lived up to the hype, which is pretty damn impressive, when you think about it.