It’s becoming NBA. I think every team makes the payoffs. And when they went to best of seven in each round, well, I think they’re doing NBA playoffs in July.
Or at least it seems that way.
Simply stated: the more teams you admit into the playoffs, the less meaningful you render the regular season. Personally, I’m against the idea of adding more teams but I don’t make the rules.
In my opinion, allowing division winners into the playoffs is a holdover from an earlier era when the league had about ½ the teams that it has now and “divisions” were more like conferences are, now (in terms of what they represented as far as league balance of power went). Back then it was unlikely that an entire division would be poor and that a division winner would seem unworthy of a shot at the league championship but that’s no longer the case. Unfortunately I read not too long ago that as far as league owners are concerned there’s no appetite for eliminating “division winner” as a criterion for making the playoffs so for now we’re stuck with the likes of that team from Texas making the playoffs even when the competition within its division is so weak.
Division winners getting into the playoffs automatically is a way to force rivalries and make divisions relevant. I don’t like it either but at least there’s a reason behind it.
To me divisions can be “relevant” in this day and age (providing rivalries, as you stated, and as an aid to scheduling) without giving their “winners” an automatic berth in the playoffs.
Sure, in the sense that you are guaranteed to play 6 games every year against them, and I believe division wins count more than other kinds of wins when calculating tiebreakers for seeding purposes. (Though I might be misremembering that last bit, that might only apply to calculating division winners, but I’m too lazy to look that up right now.) I’m not arguing that they’d be irrelevant otherwise, but you have to admit that it makes divisions a lot more relevant.
That being said, if Goodell and the owners and player representatives all came to me and asked me if division winners should continue to get automatic playoff spots I’d say no.
Was that the case this year? Who was the team that won a division but didn’t deserve the playoff spot? Looking at the standings for 2019, I see the Eagles won a division at 9-7 while the Rams missed the playoffs despite also having a 9-7 record. Is that the great injustice you want to do away with? Did the Rams deserve it more than the Eagles?
Also, your pet whipping boy team “The team from Texas” (can I just say how I cringe for you every time I read that petty appellation?) didn’t actually make the playoffs, but that didn’t stop you from citing them as an example of why the current system is bad.
Make the case for why division winners getting playoff spots is bad. The current format started in 2002. How many times has a division winner had a worse record than a (potential) third wildcard team?
The one case I can think of is 2010, when the 7-9 Seahawks won the NFC West. That year, the wildcard teams were the Saints (11-5) and Packers (10-6), while the Buccaneers and Giants (both also 10-6) were on the outside looking in.
(Also, the Packers, as the #6 seed, won the Super Bowl.)
I went through the season summaries on Pro Football Reference, and found five other instances since 2002 where the weakest division winner had a worse record than a team in their conference that didn’t get a wild card berth:
2008: San Diego (8-8) wins AFC West, New England (11-5) misses playoffs
2011: Denver (8-8) wins AFC West, Tennessee (9-7) misses playoffs
2013: Green Bay (8-7-1) wins NFC North, Arizona (10-6) misses playoffs
2014: Carolina (7-8-1) wins NFC South, Philadelphia (10-6) and San Francisco (8-8) miss playoffs
2015: Houston (9-7) wins AFC South, New York Jets (10-6) misses playoffs
So, in 18 seasons under the current playoff format, it’s happened six times, or one out of three seasons – it happens more often than I realized.
It sure would if only they could… travel back in time and institute the rule ten or twelve years ago.
“Petty appellation”? Trust me, when I refer to that team as “that team from Texas” I’m being as kind as I absolutely can bring myself to be.
Good work. So you folks who are still “on board” with division winners getting automatic playoff spots - if a single division in any given year happens to have, say, the 9th, 12th, 13th, and 15th best teams in a conference you’re still totally okay with that division’s “winner” receiving a playoff spot, huh? Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And here I thought only smart people tended to contribute on the SDMB.
A division winner (no scare quotes needed) being the 9th place team in a conference is not a reasonable concern. Even the hapless 7-9 Seahawks in 2010 were 8th.
It feels like you’re imagining a much bigger problem than there is in reality, if there is even a problem at all. For example, I remember you personally complaining about the NFC East winner not being a valid playoff team multiple times in multiple weekly NFL threads this season. And in the end, it turned out that you were completely wrong, seeing as how the Eagles went 9-7 and nobody who missed the NFC playoffs had 10 wins.
Maybe acknowledge how wrong you were before disparaging the intelligence of other posters.
It’s as childish and inane as those dopey insult names like Cowgirls, Gnats, etc… Any and all of that broadcasts information about the person using it, none of it good.
Sort of like the douchnozzles who refer to their favorite team in the first person. (“We need to draft a…” ) Epic douche chills.
Does something like this (more games, less breaks) potentially impact the likelihood or severity of health damage to the players, like concussions? It seems to me that if, say, 10 years down the road after a change like this, it comes out that it correlated with a 5% increase in serious debilitating injuries to players, and the NFL didn’t consult the players, the optics would be pretty bad.
It’s probably not known with absolute certainty, but it definitely stands to reason that, if more games are played, more injuries will occur. I know that a big part of the reason why the players have been fighting against proposals to increase the number of games has been injury risk.
It does seem like a distinctly bad idea in the age of CTE awareness to add more games to the schedule.
I would like to apologize to racepug for being an asshole. That was uncool, and totally my bad. I’ll report it and take a warning for it, fair play. It was intended as a personal attack. Over the line, and again, my apologies.
I’ll try to dial back the personal attacks in general in here.
[Moderating]
While that post was rather heated, it appeared to me to be on the correct side of the (admittedly blurry) line between “attacking the post” and “attacking the poster”, and so I will not be Warning for it. And even if it were, the fact that you self-reported and apologized would be a mitigating factor. That said, cooling off is in general a good thing, and the apology is a step in that direction. Let’s just enjoy a shared hobby, shall we?
The point of giving division winners an automatic bid is to help correct for the situation where teams are playing in a particularly difficult division. If the teams within a division would be the best 4 teams, you can EASILY end up in a situation where they all have close to 0.500 records.
It could also mean all the teams within the division are terrible, as has happened. Unless you can come up with a test to differentiate the two scenarios, the best bet is to let the playoffs sort out the teams.
If a team with a better record than a division winner doesn’t make the playoffs, it means they not only didn’t win their division, it also means at least one other team in the conference was better (including tie breakers). They are, at best, 3rd in the conference. Meh.
There is no “point” to giving division winners an automatic playoff berth. None whatsoever. It’s simply a holdover from an earlier era that the N.F.L. has been too lazy or stubborn to change. In my opinion, playoff berths should go to the 6 teams with the best record in the conference. Period.