The 13 games that will decide if Tennessee Titans earn No. 1 NFL draft pick

Here the Tennessee Titans are, 10 games behind them, lingering near the bottom .

The Titans (2-8) are a half-game back of their rival Jacksonville Jaguars (2-9) for the pole position to earn the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. The main competition for the top pick is the Cleveland Browns (2-8), Las Vegas Raiders (2-8), New York Giants (2-8), New England Patriots (3-8), New York Jets (3-8), Carolina Panthers (3-7) and Dallas Cowboys (3-6).

For a reminder: The teams with the worst records get the best NFL draft picks . If the Titans finish with the worst record in the NFL, they'll get the first pick. If they finish with the second-worst record, they'll earn the No. 2 pick. The process repeats for every team that misses the playoffs. In the event that two teams finish with the same record, the first tiebreaker is strength of schedule, with the teams that have the worst cumulative opponents' record winning those ties.

As of Sunday night, the Titans would win the strength-of-schedule tiebreaker over the Browns, Raiders and Giants; would lose the tiebreaker to the Patriots, Panthers and Jaguars; and would be tied with the Jets (the Titans would win the next tiebreaker over the Jets, because the Jets beat the Titans head-to-head).

The race to the No. 1 pick is a big, long math problem. To try to help the math feel less daunting, here's an easy week-by-week guide of the 13 games that will go the longest way to deciding whether the Titans earn the No. 1 pick.

Week 11: Houston at Dallas (Nov. 18) Monday night's game is a sneaky important one. A Cowboys win knocks them out of the two- and three-win crowd. But beyond this, it would count as two losses on the Titans' schedule, because they don't play Dallas this year but do play Houston twice.

In the cases of Carolina and Cleveland, a Dallas win counts as a three-win advantage in head-to-head strength-of-schedule for the Titans, and in the case of the Giants, it's a four-win swing because the Browns and Panthers play the Cowboys and not the Texans. The Giants play the Cowboys twice without playing the Texans.

Week 12: Titans at Texans (Nov. 24) Pretty self-explanatory: Titans losses equal better draft positioning.

Week 13: Titans at Commanders (Dec. 1) See above.

Week 14: Titans vs Jaguars (Dec. 8) This one's as important as they come. The path to the Titans getting the No. 1 pick runs through these matchups. Losses to the Jags are the only controllable head-to-head matchups the Titans have against top-pick contenders for the rest of the season, unless Cincinnati or Indianapolis falls off in a massive way.

Week 15: Titans vs Bengals (Dec. 15); Colts at Broncos (Dec. 15) Another strength-of-schedule weakener goes down in Denver. The Titans don't play the Broncos this year, so a Denver win over the Titans' AFC South foes works as a multiplier of two games for the Titans, three for the Panthers and Browns and four for the Raiders.

Week 16: Texans at Chiefs (Dec. 21); Titans at Colts (Dec. 22); Jaguars at Raiders (Dec. 22) A busy week. The Jaguars-Raiders game is meaningful no matter what because both teams are top-pick contenders. But add in the fact that a Raiders win would function as two wins on the Titans' schedule and it gains some extra importance.

Kansas City's matchup with Houston is another double-win scenario for the Titans, one that multiplies further if the Titans' competition is the Raiders, Panthers or Browns.

Week 17: Ravens at Texans (Dec. 25); Titans at Jaguars (Dec. 29); Colts at Giants (TBD) Ravens-Texans is another example of the two-wins-for-the-price-of-one situation. Titans-Jags Part 2 is just as important as the first. Colts-Giants is the interesting one, though. A Giants win doubly benefits the Titans' strength of schedule and also helps push the Giants further from the top spot.

Week 18: Titans vs Texans (TBD) Because Week 18 games are all between division foes, there aren't that many games that affect strength of schedule. Titans fans wanting the best possible draft pick should be rooting for Dallas over Washington, the L.A. Chargers over the Raiders, and Pittsburgh over Cincinnati. But by this point, it's more likely the Titans are going to need opponents to lose for positioning, not for tiebreakers.

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Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at . Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter,