The NFL playoff format could undergo a major change that would radically shift how teams are seeded in the postseason. Tabled in March, owners will vote on a resolution set forth by the Detroit Lions that would seed the seven playoff teams in each conference by record. Meaning, simply winning your division would no longer guarantee one of the top four seeds.
Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer outlined the details.
“Detroit’s proposal would be for the four division champions and three wild cards in each conference to make the playoffs. Those seven teams would then be seeded strictly by record, rather than assigning the top seeds to the division winners (which is how it’s been done since the merger), with the wild cards to follow. If teams have the same record, being a division champion would be the first tiebreaker—regardless of head-to-head record.”
Winning the division would have value but only for tiebreakers. It would run counter to how the NFL has seeded its playoff teams since the 1970 merger.
Though rare, there have been instances of teams with below-.500 records winning their division and securing a top-four seed and playoff home game to bring in extra revenue. In 2010, the Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West with a 7-9 record and were slotted ahead of the 11-win New Orleans Saints and 10-win Green Bay Packers. Hosting the Saints in the Wild Card game, Seattle won 41-36 (the “Beast Quake” game).
It’s not known how much support there is for the resolution. The benefit would no longer “penalize” a team in a tough division, relegating it to a Wild Card seed behind a division winner with a far worse record. For example, the 14-3 Minnesota Vikings of 2024 landed the fifth seed after losing the NFC North to the Lions. The 10-win Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams were seeded ahead of them. Teams would also have more incentive to play starters in the regular-season finale, and it would be rare for teams to have nothing to play for in Week 18, as is common now for a handful of the top teams in the league.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are expected to vote against the resolution. During the owners meetings in March, team president Art Rooney II flatly rejected the idea.
“We were against the playoff seeding,” Rooney said via Steelers.com’s Dale Lolley. “We think that division rivalries are one of the more important parts of the competition, and (we) just don’t want to do anything to upset that.”
The proposal will need a two-thirds majority, 24 votes, in order to pass. Odds are, it will fail. But if there is a future instance of what happened in 2010, a team with a poor record winning the division over a team that had a great season but got stuck in the Wild Card, there could be another conversation about changing how the NFL playoffs function.
Other resolutions, like banning the Tush Push, will also be voted on. That has a greater chance of being banned either explicitly or, more likely, the act of pushing a teammate forward will be outlawed. That once was the universal rule before being rescinded earlier this century, though the rule still applies to certain plays like field goals. Rooney has come out in support of the ban.
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