For so long as anybody can bear in mind, the NFL playoffs have been set as much as give division winners one of many high seeds of their convention, no matter how underwhelming their information are.
Final season, it resulted within the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams getting the third and fourth seeds, respectively, within the NFC regardless of having a 10-7 report, which was considerably worse than the report the Minnesota Vikings, who received 14 video games, had.
There’s now a proposal, which was issued by the defending NFC North champion Detroit Lions, to seed playoff groups by report and never take into accounts whether or not they received their division.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell known as the proposal “wholesome,” and the league is reportedly contemplating it, per Jonathan Jones.
Roger Goodell known as Detroit’s tabled proposal to vary playoff seeding as “wholesome.” NFL has curiosity in trying extra carefully at playoff seeding adjustments that wouldn’t assure a division winner a house playoff recreation.
— Jonathan Jones (@jjones9) April 1, 2025
There are a few divisions within the NFL which might be comparatively weak, which ends up in the present playoff format arguably leading to unbalanced seeding come playoff time.
As well as, home-field benefit is decided by seeding place and never regular-season report all through the playoffs, which provides extra credibility to the Lions’ proposal.
The NBA used to make use of the identical technique to find out playoff seeding, and it obtained some criticism about that technique, till it began arranging the highest 4 seeds in every convention based mostly on win-loss information and never which groups received their division.
The final actual change the NFL made to its playoff format got here in 2020, when, after a few years of proposals, it added a 3rd wild-card crew to every convention; earlier than that, its playoff format had remained unchanged since 1990 when it expanded its playoff subject to 12 groups.
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