Here they are, and what it means for the 49ers in the 2019 NFL Draft.
The San Francisco 49ers have a great shot at the first pick in the 2019 NFL Draft. They entered Week 14 sitting atop the draft order with a 2-10 record. They beat the Denver Broncos to improve to 3-10, but the teams around them got big wins as well. The Oakland Raiders beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 24-21 to improve to 3-10, and the New York Jets beat the Buffalo Bills 27-23 to improve to 4-9.
The Arizona Cardinals lost 17-3 to the Detroit Lions to drop to 3-10, which means we have a three-way tie between San Francisco, Arizona, and Oakland. And naturally, that brings up plenty of questions as to who has the No. 1 overall pick.
The first tiebreaker is strength of schedule. The team with the weakest SOS among tied teams gets the higher first round pick. The 49ers and Cardinals are currently tied in SOS, so it moves to the next tiebreaker.
When there is an applicable divisional or conference tiebreaker, that is applied. The 49ers and Cardinals are both in the NFC West, so divisional tiebreaker applies. I don’t know if it’s head-to-head and then divisional record, or if it moves straight to divisional record. Either way, the 49ers claim it, with Arizona sweeping the head-to-head series, and the 49ers sitting at 0-4 in the division compared to the Cardinals at 2-2. If the 49ers beat the Seahawks and Rams and the Cardinals lost their final two to them, it would move on to record in common games.
If all the divisional and conference tiebreakers don’t clear it up, it then moves to a coin flip at the NFL Combine.
I made a mistake earlier in saying it went from SOS to coin flip because that’s what happened last year between the 49ers and Raiders. They are in different conferences, so the divisional and conference tiebreakers did not apply.
So there you have it. As of this publishing, the 49ers and Cardinals are tied in strength of schedule. Through the end of the 1:25 p.m. PT games, both 49ers opponents and Cardinals opponents are exactly 106-94-2 right now. Meanwhile, the Raiders opponents are 116-88-2 heading into Sunday Night Football.
The final two games of the week are Rams–Bears and Vikings–Seahawks. The 49ers and Cardinals each play the Rams twice, the Seahawks twice, the Bears once, and the Vikings once. That means these final two games will not break the tie between them.
There are three weeks remaining on the NFL schedule, so there is a lot of time left for the 49ers and Cardinals to find some separation.
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