Jeff Saturday says that Drew Brees knows how to win and he showed his veteran strength Sunday in Buffalo, winning in the cold and keeping the defense on the sideline for as long as possible. (1:16)

As we pass the season's halfway point, the AFC looks like a top-heavy conference that is likely to produce some truly dreadful wild-card teams. One team out of a group led by the Ravens, Bills and Raiders is going to make the postseason and quite possibly end up facing Blake Bortles in the first round of the playoffs. Get your think pieces ready.

It's a shame that the NFC can't lend its fellow conference a playoff team, because it's going to leave a worthwhile contender at home. On last week's episode of my podcast, Will Brinson of CBS pointed out that there were essentially six good teams in the NFC competing for five playoff spots, leaving out the Vikings and their comfortable lead atop the NFC North as an essential lock.

I think you can even go a step further, in part because many of those teams or organizations on the fringes of contention won this past week. There are nine teams realistically competing for six playoff spots in the NFC. While there are four AFC teams that the Football Power Index assigns at least a 97 percent shot of making the playoffs, the Eagles are the only team in those rarefied heights in the NFC. It's wide open. Let's run through the contenders and try to make sense of the clouded playoff picture:

The outsiders

Chances of making the playoffs: 24.9 percent

Dallas' loss to Atlanta suddenly pushes the Cowboys out of the immediate playoff picture -- they were at 49.8 percent heading into Sunday. For all the talk about how different the offense would be without Ezekiel Elliott, losing left tackle Tyron Smith was a much bigger concern. Dak Prescott was sacked eight times on 38 dropbacks and pressured 40.5 percent of the time, his second-highest rate of the season. Unsurprisingly, the 21.0 percent sack rate Prescott endured was the worst of his brief pro career.

In the endless and already annoying debate about whether Prescott is better or worse than Carson Wentz, some will hold up Prescott's performance in the absence of Smith and Elliott as proof that Wentz is better. It seems silly to say, given that Wentz has spent most of his career with one of the NFL's most expensive offensive lines and has a receiving corps with two free-agent wideouts, a first-round pick as a slot receiver, and one of the league's best and highest-paid tight ends, but it shouldn't surprise anyone that Prescott declined without his star left tackle. The same was true when Wentz spent most of his rookie season without Lane Johnson, who might be the best right tackle in football. Both Prescott and Wentz are great.

Even if Smith does return to the lineup shortly, the defense has to worry Jerry Jones & Co. for yet another competitive season. Outside of the occasional interior rush from David Irving or Tyrone Crawford, there are too many series in which the pass rush seems to come down to DeMarcus Lawrence or bust. While there are worse strategies, given that Lawrence currently leads the league in sacks, it's going to create problems when Lawrence doesn't take over games. They barely bothered Matt Ryan on Sunday, pressuring him on just 23.3 percent of dropbacks, the fifth-lowest rate in the league.

Linebacker is also becoming a concern for Rod Marinelli's defense. Sean Lee is unsurprisingly struggling with injuries, with a reoccurrence of a hamstring injury knocking him out of Sunday's loss. The Cowboys haven't been the same defense with Lee off the field this season; former Notre Dame star Jaylon Smith has been an inspiring story in returning from a serious knee injury, but teams have taken advantage of him in the passing game. The Cowboys have allowed opposing quarterbacks to post a passer rating of 85.6 with Lee on the field, which has risen all the way to 107.8 with Lee sidelined.

Even worse, opposing offenses have averaged 3.5 yards per carry with Lee at linebacker and more than 5.5 yards per attempt with Lee on the bench. The Cowboys are a top-heavy team built around a handful of (mostly) highly paid stars, and when those players aren't available, they don't have the depth to adapt. Elliott, Smith and Lee each made the All-Pro team last year while combining to miss a total of two games due to injury before all sitting out a meaningless game against the Eagles in Week 17. Next week, the most meaningful -- and important -- game of Dallas' season will come against a much-improved Philadelphia team on Sunday night.

Dak Prescott had one of his worst games of the season in the loss to Atlanta, fumbling twice while being under heavy duress. Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Chances of making the playoffs: 25.8 percent

The Falcons probably saved their season by beating the Cowboys, given that their playoff odds would have dipped below 10 percent with a home loss. Even more than the numbers might indicate, though, Dan Quinn's team showed its potential not just by winning but by how it won.

Namely, its defense finally showed up to play. On SportsCenter with SVP on Thursday, I mentioned that the hand-wringing over the Falcons' offense and its decline under Steve Sarkisian had been overstated. Heading into Week 10, Matt Ryan & Co. were second in the league in yards per possession and eighth in points per possession.

Instead, Atlanta's defense hadn't put the offense in many favorable situations. The Falcons' offense faced the league's worst average starting field position, beginning its drives more than 76 yards away from the opposing end zone. The first-place Rams, for context, started their average drive nearly 10 yards closer to pay dirt. The defense's inability to get off the field or create big plays also had held the Falcons to a league-low 79 meaningful possessions through 10 weeks.

The Falcons' defense struggled during the regular season a year ago before taking a big leap by virtue of increased pass pressure during the postseason. The leap didn't take -- Atlanta was 26th in defensive DVOA last season and 29th after losing to the Panthers last week, but on Sunday, it finally looked like the defense that stomped all over the Seahawks and Packers in the NFC playoffs and gave the Patriots fits for most of the Super Bowl.

It was a one-man show from Adrian Clayborn, who might have earned Tyron Smith a contract extension. Clayborn racked up a staggering six sacks on Sunday, five of which came past backup Cowboys left tackle Chaz Green, who was filling in for Smith. For context, Smith had allowed a total of four sacks since the beginning of the 2016 campaign.

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Two of those sacks forced Dak Prescott fumbles, creating key turnovers for a Falcons team starved of takeaways. Atlanta had just six takeaways heading into the Cowboys game, or as many as it produced during that postseason run a year ago. The takeaways came at the end of each half, so the Falcons didn't really have an opportunity or reason to turn them into points, but the short fields created by takeaways are the easiest way to fix a broken offense.

The offense instead showed its appreciation by doing work in the red zone. A unit that ranked 23rd in points per red zone trip heading into the game scored three touchdowns and a field goal on its four trips inside the 20, even after losing Devonta Freeman to a concussion on the offense's second snap. Ryan still left a completion here or there on the field, but when the defense held up its end of the bargain, the offense did more than enough to earn what could be a crucial win in terms of wild-card tiebreakers.

Atlanta's schedule is still pretty difficult, but with five of its six division games still to come, the Falcons could quickly rise up the NFC South ranks if they get hot. No team wants to travel to Seattle, but the Falcons might be catching the Seahawks at the right time with Richard Sherman out for the season, Earl Thomas still nursing a hamstring injury and Duane Brown recovering from an ankle injury. Clayborn just racked up five sacks against a backup left tackle, and Green is a better player than Seahawks backup Matt Tobin.

The Falcons have a three-game homestand after their trip to Seattle, but two of those games are against the Vikings and Saints, who are among the best teams in football. It's not realistic to expect Clayborn to look like J.J. Watt after eating an invincibility star for the rest of the season, but if the defense starts looking like the unit from its playoff run of last season, the Falcons are still within shouting distance of mattering in the NFC.

Golden Tate had seven catches for 97 yards and a touchdown in the win over the Browns. Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Chances of making the playoffs: 32.5 percent

The Lions were a bad team last season -- worse than the Bears and Jaguars, by DVOA -- who sneaked into the playoffs by virtue of Matthew Stafford setting a league record for fourth-quarter comeback victories.

The Lions are a good team this season who might be kept out of the playoffs because they haven't been lucky late in games. The same Lions team that went 8-5 in one-score games a year ago is 1-3 in those same contests this season, coming within a half-yard of beating the Falcons and a goal-line stand of beating the Steelers.

While the 2016 Lions seemed to be unstoppable in the fourth quarter, this team is inconsistent but relentless. You don't necessarily know when they're going to turn things on, and they can get in their own way at times, but look at what the Lions did against the lowly Browns on Sunday. Detroit handed Cleveland a 10-0 lead after an ugly Stafford interception in the first quarter and struggled to stop the Browns on offense until knocking DeShone Kizer out of the game, but the Lions started making steady gains on offense and made a big play on defense.

The biggest difference between the 2016 Lions and the 2017 Lions is that sudden ability to generate takeaways on defense. A unit that forced just 14 takeaways all season in 2016 already has 18 with seven games to go. It has now taken four of those turnovers to the house after Nevin Lawson stripped Seth DeValve of the ball and returned it for a 44-yard score on Sunday. Throw in the goal-line stand that saved Detroit from a minimum of three points after Kizer bizarrely checked to a quarterback sneak with no timeouts left at the end of the first half, and it's easy to imagine how this game might have gone differently for Detroit.

The Lions still have a meaningful chance of winning their division, as FPI gives them a 15.7 percent shot at claiming the North. They hold the tiebreaker over Minnesota after beating the Vikings 14-7 on Oct. 1 and get them at home on Thanksgiving, Detroit's only game remaining against a team that currently has a winning record until Week 17 against the Packers. If the Lions can stay healthy -- which they mostly have outside of the injury to Taylor Decker, who made his season debut against the Browns -- and continue to force turnovers, they could benefit from any sort of Vikings slide.