I agree that the rules in place are bad because they allow division winners in regardless; but that simply means the solution is to get rid of that rule as opposed to just opening it up to teams that are, more often than not, barely over .500 squads that shouldn't be in the postseason.

We've seen the flipside of having half your conference make the playoffs with the NBA. So many teams that should never be in the postseason. There's much easier ways to fix some undeserving teams being let in the postseason than by letting even more undeserving teams be in the postseason.

I agree. Part of what makes the playoffs so enjoyable is that, with possibly one exception a year, every team in it has tended to be worthy of being there. And while there is often a team with a too-late surge who falls short, I not only think expansion would inevitably drag in at least one more bad team each year, but I kind of enjoy the last game of the season due to the drama of whether the 7th team will squeeze in or not. But it's hard to argue that half the teams in the league shoudl actually be in the playoffs.

Good teams lay goose eggs and bad teams get lucky. That doesn't mean I want to count on it. I'd rather remember those games because they're outliers than have to watch yet another pair of 12-4 v. 8-8 games. If you want to improve the quality of play and storylines, drop the rule that automatically lets the division winner in as earlier proposed.

I mean, if that's your argument, you might as well let every single team in the playoffs. Who knows, maybe the 6-10 team might be able to outplay a 10-6 team for a single game, and we wouldn't want to refuse any team who might be able to beat another on any given Sunday. Also, I fail to see what line is suddenly drawn that makes 14 the optimal number of teams but 16 really sucks.

You want into the playoffs? Win enough games to at least have the 6th best record in your conference (or, at least, that's how it should be). I say this as a Patriots' fan, arguably the team that got screwed over the worst by this back in 2008. Fix the "division winners automatically advance and get a home game regardless of record" rule, and we're fine.

NFL needs to fix it's salary cap. Ideally they wouldn't have to, because I think they already make enough, but the absolutely insane salaries paid in NBA and MLB mean that many potential stars are lost to other sports. And the NFL is by far the hardest sport on the bodies of the players, with a very short playing time as well.

They certainly make enough money at the ownership/corporate level lol.

I am all for expanding the playoffs.

1. Make the #1 seed worth more, it gets the only bye week.
2. One more wild card opens up lots of interesting possibilities.
3. It's just more good football. Nothing wrong with more good football.

NFL seasons are already so short and go by so fast. It's not like the NBA or NHL where pretty much half the league makes it after 82 game looooong seasons. One early injury or bad call can mean a loss in the NFL and that one loss could be the difference in winning your division and making the playoffs, or not winning it and not getting a wild card.

I don't buy into the idea that division winners should meet certain criteria outside of winning the division to qualify either. Not all divisions are created equal. Look at the gutter trash of division opponents New England has had most of recent history. Or the Colts now. Compare that to what the NFC West was 2-3 years ago. Those teams beat the hell out of each other and while the 49ers and Seahawks were good enough to go outside the division and win enough games to get 11-12 wins a year, what if there was a 7 or 8 win team winning that tough division? They get left out because some 9 or 10 win team who has a last place schedule won more games? Nah.

2013 Cardinals could have made some noise in the playoffs. Not only that but there are a lot of 8/9 win teams late in the year who would still be in it and would make a lot more games a lot more interesting. Look at baseball. Right now the Texas Rangers are playing the Angels who under old rules would be eliminated with nothing to play for. But now there is the additional WC spot per league, so the Angels aren't out, so now it makes this last 4 game series even more exciting. Same with the Twins, and Astros. It affects a lot of games.

I'll take these in turn then.

1. Make the #1 seed worth more, it gets the only bye week.

I'd personally rather stick with two teams getting bye weeks, especially since the #1 seed is so often decided by tiebreakers.

2. One more wild card opens up lots of interesting possibilities.

...such as...what? A mediocre team getting pounded into the ground by the two seed? Gee, sign me up.

3. It's just more good football. Nothing wrong with more good football.

I'd argue, most of the time, it won't be good football. It'll be a team like the Bills or the Dolphins from last year getting beat down by a two seed.

NFL seasons are already so short and go by so fast. It's not like the NBA or NHL where pretty much half the league makes it after 82 game looooong seasons. One early injury or bad call can mean a loss in the NFL and that one loss could be the difference in winning your division and making the playoffs, or not winning it and not getting a wild card.

...by the same token, this argument can be used the exact opposite way. The 2 seed might get a player injured or have a bad call in the additional game they're forced to play now and lose to an undeserving team as a result. Injuries happen, bad calls happen. The way to make them an even bigger deal than they were before is to give them another game to happen in.

I don't buy into the idea that division winners should meet certain criteria outside of winning the division to qualify either. Not all divisions are created equal. Look at the gutter trash of division opponents New England has had most of recent history. Or the Colts now. Compare that to what the NFC West was 2-3 years ago. Those teams beat the hell out of each other and while the 49ers and Seahawks were good enough to go outside the division and win enough games to get 11-12 wins a year, what if there was a 7 or 8 win team winning that tough division? They get left out because some 9 or 10 win team who has a last place schedule won more games? Nah.

...this is exactly why I would say division winners should meet criteria outside of winning the division. The NFC South was a total dumpster fire of a division last year. No one from that division was a playoff quality team. The mere fact that all anyone in that division had to do was be the best out of an awful group should say more than enough about things. I suppose there's a chance of a really strong division just beating up on each other to the point where no one can make the playoffs without division winning rules, but honestly, I don't think I've ever seen that happen. We have seen a number of awful teams that shouldn't have made the playoffs make the playoffs. Until the former becomes a reality, I don't think it's worth worrying about.

Aww, the Steelers let Scobee go.

Firstly, I picked the scenario that is most likely to happen under a system where the teams with the six best records make the playoffs, as I am proposing. If we implemented a seven team scenario, with the top 7 records making the playoffs, last year would have included the 9-7 Houston Texans and the 7-8-1 Carolina Panthers (who admittedly did make it under the equally silly current playoff rules). The year before, the 8-8 New York Jets and the 8-7-1 Green Bay Packers (again, admittedly made under the silly playoff rules) would have made it. You have to go all the way back to 2012 to find a single team better than 9-7 who would have benefitted from this, and even there, it would have resulted in another .500 or worse team (the Pittsburgh Steelers) making the playoffs in the other conference. The VAST majority of the time, the seventh best team is a fairly mediocre squad as opposed to a genuinely good one left out because the conference was so stacked.

I can't say I really agree with the exciting point, either, especially now that the games are divisional, as you mentioned. So instead of two teams phoning it again, we get to watch a couple of really desperate mediocre teams playing against good teams that have either already clincehd their division and are playing their backups or against bad teams that won't care regardless. Either way, it's not particularly exciting.

More than anything else, what I dislike is punishing the number two seed by taking away their bye just for the sake of letting what is usually a pretty mediocre squad in the playoffs. If we have to operate under division winners get into the playoffs regardless of how bad they are rules, then I'm more open to it, but nothing about this strikes me as better than a system where the top 6 records get in.