The NFL will now have 7 teams from each conference in the playoffs - a move clearly designed to make sure the Steelers make playoffs every year. Excellent! Perhaps this was done as a make-good for reinstating Miles Garrett.
Ugh…sigh.
Oh well, the Cowboys, who have gone 8-8 and 9-7 so many times of late and falling on the doorstep of the playoffs, might have it better now. Of course, knowing Dallas, what will likely happen is that they will simply lose one more game than before and continue falling on that doorstep.
Just to note that this is in the NFL’s proposed new collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union (as is a 17-game regular season), which the owners have approved. Though, from what I can tell, while the NFLPA hasn’t yet commented on it, what I’ve seen suggests that the players are unlikely to endorse this draft of the CBA.
It will all then go into negotiation, and expanded playoffs are just one aspect of the CBA which will be negotated. In other words, it’s by no means a done deal right now.
SI story on the topic: https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/02/20/nfl-owners-approve-cba-terms-will-players
If they do put seven teams from each conference into the playoffs, and don’t change the scheduling formula, then, for the first time, it will be possible for a team to go 20-0 in a season.
Only two teams in each conference can go 16-0 in the regular season; under the current system, all four of these teams would get first-round byes.
Players currently don’t get paid for the first round bye, playing the playoff game puts money in their pocket. While I don’t think the union will go for 17 regular season games, I do believe they have already expressed interest in the playoff change.
So baseball wants their playoffs to run till Thanksgiving and now the NFL wants their playoffs to run till April 1, huh?
This’ll be awesome for the 7th seeds.
This’ll suck for the 2nd seeds.
From what understand there is a big raise/bonus to the minimum salary line. Which is an interesting strategy. They guys who make millions(and get interviewed or TV and radio), may have a very different opinion than the silent mass of players. “Hmm I get a 30% raise to sit on the bench one extra game next year? Hell yeah.”
The 7th seed wouldn’t add a week to the playoffs; you’d just have six games during the Wild Card round instead of four.
The proposed addition of a 17th regular-season game would also include the elimination of a pre-season game (going down to 3 games, or 4 for the teams which play in the Hall of Fame Game). What’s not clear if the league’s proposal would change which weekend on which they start the regular season (currently the weekend after Labor Day). If the league kept “opening weekend” in the same spot, then, yes, a seventeen-game season would push the entire playoff slate one week later (assuming that it would become an eighteen-week season with a bye for each team).
And there’s no doubt they’ll start the season on that Thursday after Labor Day. Leave August for college football and capture the market when everyone’s back at work and kids are back in school. Plus, a decent Thursday night matchup gives you something to look forward to when the office gets back from vacation and you’ve spent the past two days in useless meetings wanting to spin your blowhead boss around by his shiny tie!
My first thought was “doesn’t matter, NFC East will still send only one team to the playoffs.” At least, until the NFL figures out how to exclude sucky division leaders too.
Every time I hear about them adding a 17th week to the season, it usually involves them adding a 2nd bye week as well. I haven’t heard if that was part of this offer, though.
A second bye week would be a headache, think of how many teams bitch about getting that 4th week bye. But the system kinda works with the byes over by Thanksgiving. With two byes, you could have a team with a 2nd week bye and then one in December. And yes, I do think the NFL would want to front load the byes to make sure they’ve got as many teams as possible playing from November 1 onwards when the World Series is wrapped up and weather turns cold in most of the country.
After the NFL started the bye week system (1990), they did try a season with two bye weeks per team (in 1993). The fact that they only did that for one year does suggest to me that it wasn’t a popular thing. As I look at the Packers’ 1993 schedule on Pro Football Reference, I see that they had their byes in Week 3 and Week 7, which definitely feels odd.
Also, that was back when the NFL also had their opening weekend during Labor Day weekend, so the second bye week didn’t push the Super Bowl as far into February as it would today, with the regular season typically starting one week later. (In fact, they played the Super Bowl on January 30th that year, as they also didn’t have an off week after the conference championship games.)
I don’t think the NFL cares about college FB that much that they would not decide to play labor day weekend. Yes, almost all the players come from college but college FB is doing OK now with all the TV money flowing in.
As I understand it, that’s not why they delayed the start of the season a week (i.e., the week after Labor Day) - it was because they felt that TV ratings were depressed on Labor Day weekend, because a lot of people are traveling or doing things outside for the three-day weekend, and thus not glued to their TV screens.
Yeah, I know I’m paddling against the current and turning into an old man, but this playoff expansion keeps getting out of hand and I understand that it is all about money.
But I miss the old days in baseball and football: win in the regular season and keep making the playoffs be a special thing.
Exactly, it gives people their last week of vacation and allows college to have their neutral site big games.
I know Chicago isn’t the whole USA, but I know a lot of people try to grab one last weekend out of the city over Labor Day. At my last job, it wasn’t considered being a team player to take off a lot of time in September/October after the office came to a crawl between 4th of July and Labor Day.