The 49ers' loss to the Bills on Sunday Night Football doesn't drastically reduce San Francisco's playoff chances.
The San Francisco 49ers' back-to-back road losses against the Green Bay Packers and Buffalo Bills in Weeks 12 and 13, respectively, revealed a painful reality head coach Kyle Shanahan's team has to face.
The Niners are not a playoff-caliber squad. At all.
Now at 5-7 and last place within the NFC West, the Niners seem collectively closer to a top-10 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft than they do to a postseason berth. And while the division is still very much up for grabs, with San Francisco trailing the first-place Seattle Seahawks by just two games in the win column, a 1-3 division record could easily prove to be the difference between an NFC West crown and staying in last place.
Interestingly enough, though, the 49ers' playoff chances surprisingly didn't take a massive hit despite a one-sided and ugly 35-10 loss to Buffalo in Week 13 on Sunday Night Football.
49ers' playoff hopes still alive after blowout loss to Bills
According to ESPN, the Niners still have an eight-percent chance of making the postseason despite Sunday's defeat.
This is down from a 13-percent chance after the Week 12 loss at Lambeau Field, which points out a couple of key things.
For starters, San Francisco's playoff hopes weren't great to begin with entering Week 13, and that loss to Green Bay might have been the proverbial "coup de grace" to whatever prospects Shanahan and Co. had of making the postseason.
On top of that, though, the 49ers' odds to still win the NFC West are seven percent, which suggests the only realistic chance the Niners have to make the playoffs would be to win the division outright.
This would, of course, all but require San Francisco to win its final two in-division games (against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 15 and Arizona Cardinals in Week 18) while getting some help from elsewhere to ensure the Hawks, Rams and red birds stumble down the stretch.
Likely? Probably not. A seven- or eight-percent chance isn't good for anything, no matter what.
But, there's still a chance.