Elias Sports Bureau: Bengals would be fifth seed today

-- If the NFL season ended today, the Bengals would be at New England on either Jan. 6 or 7. (Of course, there are four games to play.)

-- Based solely on their 7-5 record, the Bengals are in a five-way tie for the two AFC Wild Card positions. Their competitors are Denver, Jacksonville, Kansas City and the N.Y. Jets.

-- The first tiebreaking step is to eliminate multiple qualifiers from the same division. Of the five teams, only Kansas City and Denver are in the same division (West), and Denver would be eliminated from this particular scenario on the criteria of division record. Note: If Kansas City went on to win the first Wild Card, Denver could re-enter the tiebreaking against non-division foes, because the KC-Denver division record competition means only that Denver cannot be seeded ahead of the Chiefs.

-- But as the situation stands today, the Broncos would be out, and only the Bengals, Chiefs, Jaguars and Jets would be alive for the two wildcard spots. The applicable tiebreaker would then become conference record. The Bengals would be first among the four and claim the first wildcard, with the Jets taking the second wildcard. Cincinnati is 5-3 against AFC foes, the Jets are 5-4, Jacksonville is 4-4, and Kansas City is 3-5. (Denver has a 7-3 conference record, but, again, the Broncos could not make use of it were the season over at this point.)

-- Under the NFL’s tiebreaking formula, head-to-head play among the four teams could supersede AFC record. But that would apply only for a team that had either swept the other three or been swept by them. That does not apply among the Bengals, Jets, Jaguars and Chiefs, and thus, in this scenario, the Bengals’ Sept. 10 victory over Kansas City would have no part in the tiebreaking process. (In the head-to-head tiebreaker, if one team had beaten the other three, it would take the first Wild Card, regardless of division records. If one team had lost to the other three, it would be eliminated, with the other three moving on to the conference record tiebreaking step.)

-- As the first wildcard, the Bengals would play at the lowest seed among the four division winners. That would be 9-3 New England, which would lose a seeding tiebreaker with 9-3 Baltimore based on conference record. The Jets would play at Baltimore on the opening postseason weekend.

-- Indianapolis (10-2) and San Diego (10-2) would be the 1-2 seeds and get a first-round playoff bye. The Colts currently would prevail as the No. 1 seed, based on a better conference record than the Chargers. It’s a matter of winning percentage, as the Colts’ current 7-1 computes to .875, and San Diego’s 8-2 computes to .800.