While we're in the throes of preseason and the NFL is still pretending to listen to player concerns, I thought it'd be as good a time as any to revisit a subject we've debated on past iterations of this thread; NFL playoff qualifying.
A while back, the NFL said that the playoffs were likely to expand from 6 teams in each conference to 7, with the 2 seed simply losing their bye and having to play on wild card weekend. By the end of last year, I think most of the chat had come to the conclusion that this was probably a not so great idea, as the first round of the playoffs was incredibly boring as is and would only have gotten more so if it included a 9-7 or 8-8 team getting pasted by the 2 seed. With that said, there are legitimately times where there's a reasonable case that a team which got left out of the playoffs should've been in. Consider these recent teams:
2014 Philadelphia Eagles (10-6), missed playoffs while the Carolina Panthers (7-8-1) qualified as NFC South Champs
2010 New York Giants (10-6) and Tampa Bay Bucs (10-6), missed playoffs while the Seattle Seahawks (7-9) qualified as NFC West Champs
2008 New England Patriots (11-5), missed playoffs while the San Diego Chargers (8-8) qualified as AFC West Champs
It's not exactly common, but occasionally, a much more deserving wild card team gets absolutely screwed over by NFL division winners automatically making the playoffs and a much worse team makes it over them. With that said, nobody seems to like the idea of taking away the automatic playoff spot and home playoff game from division winner, as, well, winning the division should mean something. So with that in mind, I tried to devise a slightly tweaked NFL schedule and playoff system that kept these things constant:
#1: All division champs host at least one playoff game
#2: The #2 seed still has a first round bye
#3: We don't get playoff games with bad-mediocre teams if they can be avoided
So here's what I came up with:
First, get rid of one preseason game. The NFL has already acknowledged that there are probably too many, and they're not exactly making a ton of revenue off of it, so this isn't a big loss. As a result, the regular season opener (and the rest of the season) gets moved up by a week. Instead of starting on the second week of September, the regular season starts in either late August or very early September. This also means that the regular season ends a week earlier than it did.
Second, put an off week inbetween the end of the regular season and the wild card round of the playoffs. Teams still in the hunt have a chance to rest and recover from injuries. Hopefully this will help level the injury playing field (a bit) when it comes to the playoffs. The one exception to this is in the instance of both a third non division winning team with 10 or more wins, and a division winner with less than 10 wins. If that happens, those teams will go head to head in a play in game played at the division winner's stadium. The winner of the play in game advances to the wild card round.
There are a few potential issues, of course. The biggest problem is that 1 and 2 seeds will always have a full two weeks off inbetween their last regular season game and first playoff game, which, on one hand, is great for healing, but is also conducive to building rust. Two week byes aren't something the NFL has done before, to my knowledge, and it certainly isn't something that's happened recently. Coaches would definitely need to plan carefully to keep the team focused during such a long wait.
Additionally, since this type of matchup would only happen routinely, there's a down week inbetween the end of the regular season and the playoffs. This might potentially affect interest in wild card games, as the casual observer goes from watching the end of the playoff chase to...nothing.
Finally, I don't really have any idea of how to deal with a clusterfuck situation like the NFC had 2010 with a 7-9 division winner and 4 teams that didn't win their division but still posted 10+ win seasons. Can't really help there.
