In the weird and wild NFC South, comedy is the only guarantee

At the midway point of this NFL season, one of the few certainties was that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would win the NFC South.

How could they not?

They were 6-2, including wins over Houston, San Francisco, and Seattle, and Baker Mayfield was one of the leading MVP candidates. There was also the fact that the Bucs played in one of the league's true comedy divisions.

New Orleans, Atlanta, and Carolina ranged from poor to middling, and none of those teams seemed particularly dangerous. The Saints were trying Spencer Rattler at quarterback again, and it was not going well. The Falcons beefed up their defense in the offseason in a win-now move, and then discovered that their quarterback, Michael Penix Jr., took a step backward instead of forward. The Panthers, meanwhile, were still trying to convince themselves that Bryce Young was a viable NFL starter. He seemed like that at times, but then would be hopelessly overwhelmed by good teams, looking like a 14-year-old kid had snuck out there in a Carolina jersey.

Yes, the Buccaneers had run into some injury problems, but it's not like they would have trouble pulling away from that mess, right?

Well ...

Tampa Bay has won exactly one game since Week 9. They have lost to good teams (Patriots, Rams) and bad teams (Dolphins) and, most significantly, lost to each of the Saints, Falcons, and Panthers down the stretch.

That means the Bucs, at 7-9 and hosting the division-leading 8-8 Panthers on Saturday in a would-be NFC South championship game, are in trouble when it comes to potential tiebreakers.

If Tampa beats Carolina they would hold the tiebreaker over the Panthers, but if the Falcons then beat the Saints on Sunday to also finish at 8-9, the three-team tiebreaker would be settled by the records among the three tied teams. And because the Panthers have beaten the Falcons twice, they would have the edge.

If you've been following along closely, you will have noted the perfectly ridiculous scenario that is unfolding: a game between the 7-9 Falcons and 6-10 Saints could decide the NFC South, even though neither team can win the division and have been eliminated from playoff contention for many weeks.

Tampa Bay is like a student who writes a college-admission exam and then has their fate decided by the test score of the dumbest kid in the class.

How has this happened? In a very NFC South way, of course.

It's not that any of the teams chasing the Bucs became good, exactly, but they just managed to be less bad. The Panthers have won some games behind a run-heavy attack that puts less pressure on Young to be the hero, which is good because he is rarely that. He's managed to engineer some impressive late comeback wins in his career, but this is still the guy who literally threw for 54 yards in a 27-10 thumping by Seattle on Sunday.

The Saints have become mildly spicy behind rookie Tyler Shough, creating a very Saints scenario where the team decides it has its quarterback of the future based on a small sample that includes wins over the Jets, Titans, Panthers (twice), and the reeling Bucs. And the Falcons' comeback, so to speak, has involved the return of Kirk Cousins, who absolutely would have been unloaded in the offseason if Atlanta could've found anyone willing to take on his giant contract.

The Falcons are not good - they lost to the Jets just a few weeks ago! - but they have Bijan Robinson. The all-world running back can win games on his own, which he pretty much did Monday night with 229 scrimmage yards and two touchdowns in an upset victory over the Los Angeles Rams.

But even if all those NFC South teams have shown the mildest signs of life over the past couple months, the main reason that Tampa Bay's fate might end up in the hands of Shough is that the Bucs themselves have exploded like a watermelon dropped from a great height. Their woeful run began because the defense couldn't make any stops in blowout losses to the Patriots, Bills, and Rams, but now the offense is struggling with no run game to speak of and Mayfield forced to do it all himself.

Now that receivers like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin are back after long injury layoffs, Mayfield should be able to pilot something that looks like his formerly high-powered offense, but all Tampa had to do last week to seize control of the division was beat the lowly Dolphins and rookie quarterback Quinn Ewers and, well, they didn't.

And now they might need Shough to save them. Which is amazing. Unless you are the Bucs.

But first they have to actually beat the Panthers. Which they absolutely should do, at home, on Saturday.

But this is the NFC South. You wouldn't want to bet your house on it.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.