You play to win the game… or do you?

More than half of the NFL remains in playoff contention heading into the final week of the season. That includes teams like the Packers, who have clinched home-field advantage throughout the postseason, and it includes teams like the Raiders and Chargers, who play each other but can both get into the playoffs if they tie and the Colts lose — and that’s not even in the 256 most likely scenarios for AFC playoff seeding, which only go over win/loss possibilities.

In all of the poring over those things that can happen to get various teams into various spots this weekend, the non-playoff teams have their own say. The Ravens, for instance, need a win and plenty of help: the Chargers to lose to the Raiders, but also the Jaguars to beat the Colts and the Dolphins to go ahead and lose one more time (they’re playing the Patriots, who still have a shot at home field and the first-round bye).

Generally, the teams out of the playoffs are better off losing to improve their draft position, but with all these games being divisional matchups in Week 18, there also are rivalries to consider — and maybe that’s something that plays into what plays out to end the regular season.

Considering that, here are the eliminated teams going into the final week, ranked by how much it would mean to win that finale, draft position be damned (records and current draft position in parentheses.

The Giants have scored 49 points during their current five-game losing streak, and couldn’t even manage a touchdown against the godawful Bears on Sunday. It’s not only about doing whatever it takes to keep that top-5 draft pick in addition to the Chicago selection, it’s about losing in such embarrassing fashion that ownership has no choice but to fire Joe Judge. Given ownership’s delusional view of Judge as a competent NFL coach who should continue with this team, that may mean losing by 90 or more points, but that’s just what Big Blue needs to do.

As the only 5-11 team in the league, the Panthers can only move up in the draft if they lose, and can only move down in the draft if they win. Honestly, with the Bucs already having the NFC South clinched, everyone involved would be just fine with “nobody got hurt” as the result.

Would you believe that the Lions have a two-game home winning streak? Well, they do. They’re also playing the Packers, who have the NFC bye locked up, so this game means nothing unless the Lions lose and the Jaguars win, boosting Detroit to the No. 1 draft pick. Last time the Lions drafted No. 1 was 2009, when they got Matthew Stafford, which came between getting Calvin Johnson and Ndamukong Suh at No. 2 in 2007 and 2010, respectively.

Likely the final game in Football Team history, unless the coming rebrand announcement is a keep-brand announcement. Who will ever forget the sub-.500 division winners of the pandemic year? We’re still in the pandemic, but the NFL only recognized it for a year. Anyway, beating the Giants is fine. Not beating the Giants and maybe moving up a draft spot is fine, too.

The way they folded against Tom Brady for old times’ sake on Sunday, it doesn’t matter if they manage to beat the Bills and spoil Buffalo’s shot at the division title, they’re still going into the offseason as the Same Old Jets and nobody really knowing if Zach Wilson is ever going to be any good. They’ll have two top-10 picks, can’t wait to see how they blow ‘em.

The NFC North’s disappointments square off in Minnesota and there’s absolutely nothing on the line other than a momentary bit of satisfaction from ending the season by having beaten those bastards, whichever bastards get beat.

The Cardinals can only win the NFC West if the Rams also lose, and it’s not like there’s a great preference on Seattle’s part for either Arizona or LA to win the division. It would be nice to potentially send Pete Carroll off with a win, if this is his last game as Seahawks coach.

This has been a dismal stretch run for a team that started the year at 3-1 and thinking maybe they’d turned a corner. They can’t really spoil much for the Bengals, who have the most outside of chances at the AFC’s top seed, but not ending the year on a four-game losing streak would ease at least a little bit of the panic heading into an offseason with a lot of questions to answer.

Nobody wants to have the No. 1 pick back-to-back years, especially with no consensus pick for this one and the last one looking a little busty (how much you blame Urban Meyer for Trevor Lawrence’s year is up to you). Maybe Jacksonville-Indianapolis isn’t the most heated rivalry, but possibly knocking the Colts out of the playoffs would be a good way to end a miserable year.

Sure, Kansas City’s hopes for the No. 1 seed hinge on the Titans losing to the Texans, but it’s still a major rivalry — one in which the Broncos have lost the last 12 games. That’s a streak you want to end.

The pick is going to be somewhere between third and sixth, and not to downplay the difference in those slots, but when you haven’t picked in the top 10 since 2014, it’s momentous to actually be able to add a top-notch prospect through the draft, whatever the position is. Meanwhile, Houston has a chance to end the year by winning three out of four under David Culley, and gain a season sweep of the Titans, who have the top seed and a bye at stake and who everyone assumes will beat the pants off the Texans on Sunday. They probably will, but still, the Texans have some motivation here.

It’ll take the expanded season to do it, but the Dolphins are trying for their first consecutive years with winning records since a seven-year run of solid football from 1997-2003 under Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstedt. Miami still hasn’t made the playoffs since 2016, but it’s big for the organization to regain some semblance of stability.

Being out of the playoffs, ho-hum, it’s the Falcons — they get crazy good once a decade and go on a big run before finding a hilarious way to fail, and this isn’t that once a decade. Beating the Saints to knock them out of the playoffs? That’s the stuff. Ideally, the 49ers would be losing to the Rams at the same time, because New Orleans also needs that result, but regardless of what’s going on in L.A., the Falcons winning this game would be better than the Falcons having squeaked into the playoffs themselves to get destroyed by the Bucs or whatever and go straight home.