It’s Time For NFL To Change Playoff Seeds!
The NFL has a problem. Year after year, a popular topic on sports radio and at water coolers everywhere is how the league seeds its playoff teams, and who gets home games.
Some years, it’s worse than usual. Remember a couple of years ago when the Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West division and hosted a playoff game after a 7-9 season? This year, it’s not quite that bad, but it still doesn’t make any sense.
The New Orleans Saints were 11-5 on the year, but lost out on the division title to the 12-4 Carolina Panthers. Same for the San Francisco 49ers, who went 11-5, but finished 2nd to the Seattle Seahawks. Yet for some inexplicable reason, they are both “wild cards”, and will be playing at the 10-6 Philadelphia Eagles and 8-7-1 Green Bay Packers facilities respectively.
It doesn’t make sense to me. Never has. Why should teams with better win-loss records be playing on the road, just because two other teams won their divisions? Isn’t getting in the playoffs enough of a reward for teams who win their divisions? Why isn’t win-loss records the definitive decider when it comes to the playoffs?
The NFL doesn’t do many things wrong. The NFL is the best thing going in american sports, and most decisions they make are the right ones. Therefore, it seems woefully inconsistent when they much up this situation year after year.
I think it’s about time a change is made.
The NBA and NHL seeds their playoff teams one through eight, where one plays eiught, two plays seven and so on. I can see why you can’t do that in football. First of all, there are only six playoff teams per conference. Six doesn’t work out if one plays six, two plays five and three plays four. You’d have three winners, and no way to match up three teams the next week. So that’s out. You’d have to allow two more teams to make the playoffs for that to work, which would take too long in January.
The other option, and the best one in my mind, is the NFL should give the top two seeds a bye week and a home game against the winners of the previous week.Teams three to six should then be seeded regardless of division win, based on record and record alone. The third seeded team would play the sixth seed at home, while the fourth seeded team would host the fifth seed. Doesn’t that make much more sense?
If you win each of the four divisions, you make the playoffs. After that, it all goes by record. Easy peasy. Plain and simple. Makes the most sense to me and I’m sure you too.
