Every year, in the final weeks of the NFL season, we see teams that have secured their playoff positions and essentially take a pass on the final games. They have no major incentive to win and pull many of their best players to preserve them for the upcoming playoffs. So we see unpredictable upsets with first-rate teams suddenly become fourth-raters.
My proposal? Give late-season games a preferential bias in determining the playoff schedule. I’d still make win-loss ranking the primary means of determing playoff seeding. But if two teams have identical an win-loss record, the tie breaker is whichever team had the most recent victory. If Miami and New England both have 11-5 records, then the team that won in Week 17 beats the team that lost its final game. If they both won or lost in the final week, go back to Week 16 and so on.
With such a system, teams would have an incentive to keep playing their best in the final weeks.