Good News, Browns: Your Chances Of Making The Playoffs Are 1 In 19 Quintillion The 19,649,922,085,696,900,000-1 dream is alive in Cleveland.

For a brief moment there on Sunday, the Cleveland Browns’ 2017 season appeared to be lost. The team was defeated by the Jacksonville Jaguars, moving its record to 0-10. Considering that no team has ever made the NFL playoffs with 10 losses, the result seemed to dash any remaining hope in Cleveland that the Browns would make a run.

Or did it?

It turns out, thanks to the assiduous investigations of a Redditor who goes by MrMolonLabe, the Browns are still in this thing: Provided that 46 different games go their way — including two ties — a hypothetical 6-10 Cleveland Browns can be the second AFC wild card team.

It’s all rather simple. First, Cleveland wins out — that’s the easy part. Then the Browns need the following: Week 12 wins from Kansas City, Tennessee, New England, Houston, Dallas and Carolina; Week 13 wins from New England, Denver, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Detroit and the Giants; Week 14 wins from Indianapolis, the Jets, Kansas City, New England, Chicago, Washington and San Francisco; Week 15 wins from Denver, Kansas City, Miami, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Minnesota and Dallas; Week 16 wins for Baltimore, Kansas City, San Diego, New England, Pittsburgh and Washington; and Week 17 wins for Kansas City, Indianapolis, New England and Cincinnati. Also, the Broncos and Raiders need to tie in Week 12, and the Bills and Dolphins need to tie in Week 17.

If all this happens, there would be four AFC teams with a record of 5-10-1 and five more at 5-11. The Patriots, Steelers, Chiefs and Titans would win their respective divisions, and the Jaguars would get the first wild card at 12-4. That leaves the Ravens and Browns tied for the last spot at 6-10. The Browns would win the tiebreaker because their Week 15 win over Baltimore would split the season series, and Cleveland would have a better record in the division.

Luckily, we happen to have forecasts for each of those games and can assign a probability for each of those discrete events based on each team’s current Elo rating. Here’s how it shakes out:

So you’re saying there’s a chance… What the Browns need to happen to make the playoffs this year WEEK OUTCOME PROBABILITY CUM. PROBABILITY 12 New England beats Miami 90% – 90.00000000% Kansas City beats Buffalo 78 – 70.20000000 Dallas beats L.A. Chargers 68 – 47.73600000 Carolina beats N.Y. Jets 57 – 27.20952000 Tennessee beats Indianapolis 52 – 14.14895040 Houston beats Baltimore 32 – 4.52766413 Cleveland beats Cincinnati 16 – 0.72442626 Denver-Oakland tie* 0.35 – 0.00253549 13 New England beats Buffalo 76 – 0.00192697 Jacksonville beats Indianapolis 75 – 0.00144523 Pittsburgh beats Cincinnati 66 – 0.00095385 Kansas City beats N.Y. Jets 64 – 0.00061047 Tennessee beats Houston 63 – 0.00038459 Denver beats Miami 45 – 0.00017307 Detroit beats Baltimore 45 – 0.00007788 N.Y. Giants beats Oakland 32 – 0.00002492 Cleveland beats L.A. Chargers 14 – 0.00000349 14 New England beats Miami 81 – 0.00000283 Kansas City beats Oakland 77 – 0.00000218 N.Y. Jets beats Denver 42 – 0.00000091 Wash. beats L.A. Chargers 39 – 0.00000036 Indianapolis beats Buffalo 34 – 0.00000012 Chicago beats Cincinnati 31 – 0.00000004 Cleveland beats Green Bay 25 – 0.00000001 San Francisco beats Houston 21 – 0.00000000 15 New Orleans beats N.Y. Jets 82 – 0.00000000 Minnesota beats Cincinnati 77 – 0.00000000 K.C. beats L.A. Chargers 76 – 0.00000000 Jacksonville beats Houston 69 – 0.00000000 Dallas beats Oakland 52 – 0.00000000 Denver beats Indianapolis 45 – 0.00000000 Miami beats Buffalo 34 – 0.00000000 Cleveland beats Baltimore 21 – 0.00000000 16 New England beats Buffalo 87 – 0.00000000 Kansas City beats Miami 83 – 0.00000000 Baltimore beats Indianapolis 74 – 0.00000000 Pittsburgh beats Houston 67 – 0.00000000 Wash. beats Denver 64 – 0.00000000 L.A. Chargers beats N.Y. Jets 46 – 0.00000000 Cleveland beats Chicago 22 – 0.00000000 17 New England beats N.Y. Jets 88 – 0.00000000 Kansas City beats Denver 66 – 0.00000000 Indianapolis beats Houston 52 – 0.00000000 Cincinnati beats Baltimore 32 – 0.00000000 Cleveland beats Pittsburgh 6 – 0.00000000 Buffalo-Miami tie 0.35 – 0.00000000 Total 1 in 19,649,922,085,696,900,000 * Since 2012, 0.35 percent of games ended in a tie

Some are trickier than others: Elo can’t tell us the probability that a given NFL game will end in a tie because most NFL games do not end in ties. For that, we’ll need a better estimate: There have been 5 ties since 2012 over 1,440 games played, giving us a back-of-the-napkin probability of a specific game going to a tie as 0.35 percent, a rate of about 1 tie every 288 games.

Let’s set aside Cleveland’s two needed ties for a moment. Multiplying the Elo probability that each game breaks the Browns’ way, we anticipate there is a 1 in 238,559,677,617,755 chance that they will get that sixth wild card slot. The probability of having two specific selected games tie is a 1 in 82,369 chance. Combining those two chances, we anticipate that the Cleveland Browns have a 1 in 19,649,922,085,696,900,000 — that is 19.6 quintillion — chance of making the playoffs.

More to the point, the Browns have a probability of 32 percent to go 0-16 this year. But hey, anything is possible.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.