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ATLANTA -- The Giants' 34-0 loss to the Falcons yesterday dropped them to essentially third place in the NFC East, but they still control their own playoffs destiny.

If the Giants (8-6) win out, they will earn at least a wild-card bid, an NFL spokesman confirmed.

In that scenario -- beating both the Ravens and the Eagles -- the Giants would finish 10-6, with an 8-4 record in the NFC. That conference record would give them tiebreakers over the other wild-card contenders.

In the rest of the conference, the Falcons have wrapped up the NFC South and the Packers have won the NFC North. Either the 49ers (10-3-1) or the Seahawks (9-5) will win the NFC West. All the other remaining teams in the NFC playoff picture are at 8-6: Redskins, Cowboys, Bears and Vikings.

If the Giants win out, either the 49ers or the Seahawks -- whoever does not win the NFC West -- could still have a better record than them and earn the No. 5 seed. But if the Giants get to 10-6 and do not win the division, they cannot be overtaken for the No. 6 Wild-Card spot.

The Redskins and the Cowboys cannot both get to 10 wins, since they play each other in Week 17. If the winner of that game finishes at 10-6, that team will be the NFC East champion and out of the Wild-Card race, while the loser would have no better than a 9-7 record.

Lastly, the Giants would be ahead of both of the Bears and Vikings even if all finish at 10-6. Since the Giants have not played either team, the tiebreaker would kick down to conference record. Both the Bears and Vikings can finish with at best a 7-5 conference record, worse than the 8-4 record in the NFC the Giants would have by winning out.

That's headache-inducing, but I've gotten a lot of questions, so I hope that helps.

And yes, the Giants could still win the NFC East -- but yesterday's loss took control of their division out of their hands. Right now, they are essentially in third place, because they have the worst division record (2-3) of the three teams.

If they finish at 10-6, and neither the Cowboys nor the Redskins reach 10 wins, the Giants will be division champions. But if the Giants win out and either the Cowboys or Redskins do (both can't, as we said above), the Giants would lose the tiebreaker.

The first tiebreaker in a two-way division tie is head-to-head record. The Giants split season series with both the Cowboys and Redskins, so it kicks down to the next tiebreaker, record within the division. Both the Cowboys and Redskins already have three wins in the NFC East and the victor in the Week 17 game will get one more, while the Giants would only finish with three division wins if they win out.

Jenny Vrentas: jvrentas@starledger.com; twitter.com/JennyVrentas

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