NFL MONDAY REPORT : Wild-Card Spots Hold Interest as Conference Races Become Clearer

The NFL is lucky it added a sixth playoff team in each conference this season.

If it hadn’t, the NFC race would be just about over with six weeks left in the regular season.

Two games Sunday--Washington’s 31-17 win over New Orleans and Philadelphia’s 24-23 victory in Atlanta--put the Redskins and Eagles in excellent position for two of the conference’s three wild-card slots.

With the 49ers, Giants and Bears simply counting time until they clinch their divisions, the only things to be decided in the NFC are:

* Home field for the playoffs.

* Which division winners get an extra playoff game.

* Which team among the Packers (5-5), Saints (4-6), Vikings (4-6) and even (gasp!) the Cowboys (4-7) gets that last spot.

Sunday’s results also clarified things in the AFC, where it looks like each division may contribute two teams.

The Chiefs’ win over the Chargers, for example, temporarily pushed San Diego (5-6) out of the playoff picture.

Pencil in Buffalo (9-1) and Miami (8-1 going into tonight’s game against the Raiders) in the East. Figure two teams among Cincinnati (6-4), Pittsburgh (5-5) and Houston (5-5) make it in the Central. And figure two of four teams in the West should make it--the Raiders (6-3 before tonight’s game), Chiefs (6-4), Chargers (5-6) and Seahawks (4-6).

Oh yes.

It looks like we won’t have Denver to worry about in the Super Bowl following its overtime loss to Chicago that dropped the Broncos to 3-7.

LIFE (OR THE NFL) IS UNFAIR--Let’s assume that the Bears go unbeaten for the rest of the season and finish 15-1. Then assume that the winner of the 49ers-Giants game goes unbeaten and the loser is 15-1.

Either the 10-0 Giants or the 49ers, who tied an NFL record with their 18th straight win Sunday, would have to play a wild-card team in the first round of the playoffs.

That’s because under the expanded format, the division champion with the worst record has to play that first-round game.

That would be the 49ers or Giants because the loser of their game would have an NFC loss and thus a worse record in the conference than the Bears, whose only defeat was by the Raiders, an AFC team.

It remains an unlikely scenario.

Before going to San Francisco, the Giants are at Philadelphia on Sunday. Until their opening game win over the Eagles, the Giants had lost four straight against Philadelphia. And the Eagles, after their victory over Atlanta, have won four in a row. New York also has a home date with 9-1 Buffalo Dec. 15.

The 49ers go for a record 19th in a row Sunday at Candlestick--on paper, not hard.

But it’s a traditional rivalry and the Los Angeles Rams have won three of their last five games in San Francisco. The 49ers’ other tough games? At Cincinnati Dec. 9 and, possibly, in Anaheim Dec. 17.

The Bears benefit from finishing fourth last season.

They could have trouble at Minnesota on Sunday but their two toughest games look like one at Washington Dec. 9 and at home Dec. 29 against Kansas City.

BAD TEAMS--In nine of 10 games, Denver has led at the half. The Broncos are 3-7. They have a turnover ratio of plus-5 in the first half of games and minus-12 in the second.