The current playoff format has been around since the 2002 season. It is usually shocking when the league decides to alter their format simply because of how consistent it is.
Division winners get home playoff games. Wild Card teams must go on the road. Simple stuff.
Now, though, the league is looking to change some things, and the Philadelphia Eagles may be directly involved with those changes.
NFL insider Albert Breer reported ahead of Owners Meetings that the league is looking into changing their playoff format where teams with the best records would get home games in their conference playoffs as opposed to those who win the division.
"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," Breer explained. "If teams have the same record, being a division champion would be the first tiebreaker—regardless of head-to-head record."
Why does this matter? Well, in the 2024 playoffs, the Eagles walked in with the second seed as the NFC East champions and second-best record in conference play.
Under the new format, the organization would have been the third seed and would have had to travel to face the Minnesota Vikings in the second round of the playoffs ... if they managed to defeat the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card round.
That would also have left the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to have the seventh and final seed of the NFC playoffs.
Our view?
This whole thing is absurd. The league wants to make their playoff rule changes based off an outlier season where the NFC North was far better this year than any other. To completely mitigate the importance of a division title is to essentially adopt what the NBA has done in their playoff format.
And why in the world would the NFL want to borrow from a league that doesn't hold a candle to them?
Whatever the reason, the league is NFL to change some things up moving forward. And these changes don't appear to be for the better.