Roger Goodell talked about extending the playoff format to include 16 teams instead of the current 12. He hopes to bring it before the competition committee soon. Here's why I don't like it.
First of all, 16 teams is literally half the league. Right now, with the current 12 team format, only the best advance. The top teams make the playoffs and we get superior post season competition. Barring the occasional instances when a division is so weak that a team wins it with a losing record (looking at you, Seattle), or with a .500 record (looking at you Denver and San Diego), you are practically guaranteed to only get winning teams in the playoffs. Adding four more teams is going to practically guarantee you get at least one 8-8 team.
Let's back track a little bit. Let's also pretend that we had this proposed 16 team format in place ten years ago, here's what the playoffs would have looked like. In 2011, you have New England, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Houston all with winning records. You have the Broncos win that weak AFC West at 8-8. We're counting that as that occasional instance of a weak division pushing a bad team into the playoffs. To add two more teams? Well, there was only one other team with a winning record - Tennessee went 9-7. So the next team has to be among the New York Jets, San Diego, or Oakland, all who went 8-8. Take a look at the NFC side of things, where there were literally only six teams with winning records in the entire conference. All made the post season. Adding two more teams would have brought two 8-8 teams.
Take a look at 2010. In the AFC, there were seven teams with winning records. Only the San Diego Chargers missed the playoffs at 9-7. Add two more teams to the equation, yeah, the Chargers get in, but so does either the Raiders or Jaguars who both finished at 8-8. The NFC was particularly frustrating because that was a year in which the NFC West was so pathetic, Seattle won the division and advanced with a 7-9 record. That year, there were seven teams in the NFC with a winning record. The New York Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers both missed the playoffs despite both going 10-6. It sounds at first like this is a good example FOR extending the playoffs. Add two more teams, neither of those teams miss the playoffs. However, no matter how you cut it, you still end up with a losing team. Let's pretend Tampa Bay was in the NFC West and so they won the division instead of the 7-9 Seahawks. Throw in two more teams, you get the 10-6 Giants, but then there literally wasn't even an 8-8 team that year. You'd still have to include the 7-9 Seahawks to take that final Wild Card spot. (More on this later.)
Let's go back one more year to 2009. Extending the format by two teams per conference would have included two more winning teams to the post season in the AFC (Pittsburgh and Houston both went 9-7), but in the NFC, you only had one non-playoff team with a winning record. Adding two more teams again guarantees an 8-8 team. That final spot goes to Carolina, New York, or San Francisco, none of who finished above .500.
It's hard to find a 16 team post season that does not include at least one 8-8 team. 2008 is close. It was another year in which the fact that you advance just by winning even a bad division seems like a flaw as the 8-8 Chargers made the post season why the 11-5 Patriots missed out on a tie breaker. But there were also only seven teams in the AFC with a winning record, so no matter how you cut it, an 8-8 team makes it. A 16 team format in 2007 would have included three 8-8 teams. In 2006, we would have seen four 8-8 teams.
So sure, if the argument against the extended format is that you increase the chances of a losing team making the playoffs, you will have a hard time proving that (though statistically speaking, it does increase the chances - it's still unlikely though.) You have to go back to 2004 to find a situation where adding two more teams per conference would have included a sub-.500 team regardless of divisional winners. To find that 8th team for the NFC, you'd have to look at the Carolina Panthers, who finished 7-9. Same thing in 2002, when you'd need to include the 7-9 Redskins, Panthers, Rams, or Seahawks to reach the 8 team quota. In the past ten years, only in 2005 would you find a 16 team format included only winning teams. 2005 is the last time in which each conference had eight teams with winning records.
Point being, adding two teams doesn't sound like it will water down the competition that much, but it really does. The odds of including a losing team are higher, but still small. However, the other side to the equation is true as well - you aren't going to just include good teams. You will get weak competition that, frankly, doesn't deserve to be there. As it stands right now, we are poised to have another season in which there aren't enough winning teams to fulfill the 16 team format. Currently, there are seven teams in the AFC above .500, while there are nine in the NFC (though we're likely to see that drop to seven by year's end).
It should tell you something that in the past 10 years, we'd have three years in which a losing team made the playoffs, nine years in which at least one 8-8 team made it, and only one year in which all sixteen teams were above .500 if we had a 16 team post season.
The post season is supposed to reward the best teams in the league. By increasing the playoff slots, you demean the value of the regular season. Further, to increase it to eight teams per conference, you then remove the Bye Week for the top seeds. The Bye Week is perhaps the only incentive for teams with nine or ten wins by the final month to keep playing hard. If there's no Bye Week incentive for finishing at the top of the regular season, what incentive is there for say the New England Patriots to keep putting their starters forward? The Patriots currently sit at 10-3. They have already won their division and a playoff spot. They can rest their starters for the final three games of the season, lose them all, finish 10-6 and still potentially grab the 3 seed. The same thing can be said of Denver. What incentive is there for these teams to really put their best foot forward for the final few weeks of the season? The Bye Week is. They are not just trying to get home field advantage throughout the playoffs; they are also trying to get a week off to rest some of their starters and hopefully get a few back from injuries.
The Bye Week is a fair reward for playing the best football in the regular season. In the past ten years, five times has a team that won a bye week also gone on to win the Super Bowl. That's pretty split, and I think that indicates that the bye week is not such a huge advantage. With half the time being won by a team that didn't have a bye, it shows that you don't need it to win out. However, it is a benefit to putting forth a strong effort through the entire season. It is incentive for the best teams to keep playing late in the season.
Another thing to keep in mind is how the NFL has been discussing the possibility of increasing the regular season from 16 games to 18. How can they honestly propose this while also proposing adding an extra game to the post season? Right now, a team that doesn't earn a bye week but makes the Super Bowl plays 20 games in the season. Tack on one more post season games and two additional regular season game, any team that makes it to the Super Bowl is going to have to play 23 games. That's almost six months of football! In a day and age where the NFL is promoting so many different (and often times worse) rules in the name of player safety, how can they possibly justify adding an extra month of football? What is that going to do to these players?
While we're on the topic of adding an extra month of football, you also have the logistical problem of how you air these games. As it stands right now, there are four games in the Wild Card and Divisional rounds. It's a pretty easy break down. You put two games on Saturday, two games on Sunday. Most fans can sit through a double header on the weekends. Increase the format to sixteen teams, no one gets a bye week, that means that we now have eight games. Typically, each game gets its own broadcast time so that there is no other football competing with it. The NFL post season games are completely independent from each other so that we can maximize enjoyment. We don't have to worry about missing a playoff game or have a simultaneous game get spoiled for us as we Tivo it while watching the other game. How are you supposed to put eight games in two days in a way that has each game independent?
I've heard an argument to put three games on Saturday and Sunday (usually CBS gets the AFC games while Fox gets the NFC), and then you put two games on ESPN for their Monday night football. Ok, well, first of all, how do you decide who gets the Monday night game? You can't say that the top seeds get it as a benefit for finishing on top in the regular season, because you also give that extra day's rest to the worst team. Further, that's a LOT of football for a weekend. Sure, you can argue that on Sundays, we get three separate games anyway - the 1:00, 4:30, and Sunday Night football at 8:30. True, and that's a lot of football in one day. How many people actually watch three games in a row? And if so, how many do so because it's just one day a week? You're not just seeing if we'll sit through a triple header on Sunday. You're seeing if we'll sit through a triple header on Saturday in addition to it! I don't know about you, but I have stuff to do on the weekends. I can usually sit through a couple of games on Sunday, but I can't waste an entire weekend watching football. And then on Monday night? You'd have to start the game at 4:30 to ensure that both games finish at or before midnight. (Alternatively, you could minimize commercial breaks to speed the game along, but I think we all know that that is never ever going to happen.)
It's just too much. There's no good way to broadcast a 16 team format. This is part of the reason the bye week is such a good idea in the first place. Never mind the reward for the best regular season teams, it also prevents the weekend from being over saturated with NFL football.
At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with the current 12 team format. It helps create a smooth broadcasting schedule that is fair to most fans and both networks. It helps ensure that only the best teams advance. It puts stock in the regular season. Yes, I hear you, fans who say that some teams are the beneficiary of a weak schedule. By all means, some teams do benefit from it (case in point, this year's Indianapolis Colts). But if you're willing to mess everything up and make things worse because some teams have weaker schedules, where do you stop? What about the divisions? How do you account for teams like the San Diego Chargers who win a division with an 8-8 record because it's a bad division, meanwhile the 11-5 New England Patriots miss out on a tie breaker? It's the NFL. Yes, not all schedules are equal, but it's professional football. Any team really is capable of beating any other. Any given Sunday, and all that. Sure, would we be very surprised if the Kansas City Chiefs beat the New England Patriots? No doubt. Does anyone really think it's impossible though?
If any change is going to be made to the current NFL playoff format, it should be a requirement to have a winning record to advance (or at a minimum, 8-8). I still don't think it's right that a 7-9 team can "win a division," and make the playoffs while a 10-6 team misses out as a result. The "win the division and you're in" should have a stipulation that says, "but if you don't finish .500 or above, you forfeit your spot."
But that's probably just me.
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