Does the NFL need to change how it seeds the playoffs. I just look at a team like Minnesota or possibly Detroit that if they don’t win the division will end up being a 5th seed and have to travel in the playoffs. To me, you should be rewarded for number of wins, not winning your weak-ass division—I’m looking at you Atlanta and Tampa.
Just seems unfair that teams that could end up with the 2nd best record in the NFL has to play a road play-off game because some team possibly won their division with a .500 record.
I think Division winners should be seeded higher. Winning your Division needs to count for something. I do understand how others would see it differently though.
It has been nice having 6 games on wildcard weekend since the playoffs expanded to 7 teams….
but…
I could also the appeal of having only 6 playoff teams in each conference to increase the value of the regular season…
and…
then giving the top 2 division winners the bye weeks…
but have the “wild card” round seeded based on best records.
It does seem crazy to me that a team like Minny could go 14-3… potentially have the SAME record as the #1 seed Lions…
and potentially have to play on the road against a 10-7 team (Falcons) that would have only 4 wins against teams with winning records.
I’m mostly okay with the current system. However a team winning it’s division with a losing record has happened before… That’s a bit of a joke and shouldn’t get a home playoff game.
This comes up every year, the 5th seed has always had a better season than the 4th seed (who sometimes has a losing record), and often the 3rd seed. This year those numbers just happen to be really exaggerated.
Look divisional winners should always be able to go to the playoffs if you win your division even if you’re 500 or under, but you should not be granted home-field advantage I’m sorry you don’t deserve it with a depleted record.
The system has worked for years. I see no reason to change it now.
The variance in schedule and week to week team strengths makes the whole discussion kind of silly as we all know a key injury can make a huge difference. Dallas with and without Parsons is pretty dramatic. So even the strength of schedule is hard to weigh.
The Lions played the Rams at almost full strength for both teams. But the Rams really dipped due to injuries. And are now back in business.
If the NFL goes to 8 teams per conference for playoffs…
It will be a terrible idea.
.
Playing 18 games… and having 1/2 of the conference make the playoffs….
just to have the entire season rest on the health of the roster for 1 week in January…. which could be affected by unpredictable weather… is an absolute disaster.
I’m not disputing your post…..
but just pointing out that the continued diminishing of regular season importance is an absolutely awful idea.
I think the NFL’s task is to be in a middle ground between the old MLB system vs the old NBA system.
For the MLB, they didn’t have enough teams in the playoffs. It put TOO much stock in regular season records. For years only the teams with the best records participated in a postseason. Then they expanded it to have the 2 teams with the best regular season records from each “conference” compete against eachother for the right to go to the World Series. That is too limited. They have slowly expanded it since then. We won’t go into the fact that MLB plays a ridiculous amount of games per season. LIke…WTF?
The NBA was on the other side of the spectrum for years, as far as their postseason format. And to a degree they are still there. They play a stupid number of regular season games. But they also had more than half the league making the postseason. Again…WTF?
The NFL is not perfect. But they don’t play an insane number of games. If they ever tried to expand the season and play 40 games, fans would not be as intense about every week like we are now. Even if the players bodies could hold up, its still too much football for a single season. I also think they did a GOOD thing when they expanded the playoffs. And what I really like is they didn’t expand it by TWO teams. They only expanded it by ONE team and took away the bye for the #2 seed. They increased the reward for being the #1 seed and kept more teams interested in their playoff chances deeper into the season.
The problem is that that there are too many divisions relative to the number of total teams. 16 teams and 4 divisions in each conference makes each division only four teams. When there’s only four teams, you may not have to be very good to finish ahead of only three other teams. So few teams defeats that value of winning a division.
The way to solve it is go back to two divisions - East and West. Now with eight teams, winning a division means something and gets you either the 1 or 2 seed. Then the next five best records fill out the playoff card. With this format, it would be almost impossible for the 2 seed to finish with a worse record than the 7 seed. So there would be no visiting teams with better records than the home team that they’re matched up with.
