The Commissioner wants the playoff tree to be reconfigured to tie seeding to record, without regard to whether a team won its division. The goal isn’t to promote equity when it comes to who’s at home and who’s on the road in the playoffs; the objective is to make late-season games more compelling by giving teams more to play for.
Whether that happens remains to be seen.
If the Commissioner gets his way on this (yes, the Lions proposed it, but the league office [instigated it](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/nfl-nudged-lions-to-propose-change-to-playoff-seeding)), it creates a separate issue as it relates to the scheduling formula.
Currently, every team plays: (1) six games against the three other teams in its division; (2) four games against all teams from another division in the conference, which rotates every year; (3) two games against the teams from the remaining divisions in the conference that finished in the same position the year before (first, second, third, fourth); (4) four games against all teams from a division in the other conference, which rotates every year; and (5) one game against a team from a division in the other conference that finished in the same position the year before.
By devaluing a division championship and emphasizing competition within the conference, the eight games every year that arise from an effort to ensure variety in schedule need to be reconsidered. Last year, the teams of the NFC North benefited from playing two of the weak divisions — the AFC South and NFC West. This year, it’ll be a much different story for the Lions, Vikings, Packers, and Bears; they play eight games against the teams of the AFC North and NFC East.
Likewise, the Rams have a very real chance at being in the No. 1 seed in 2025, given that they’ll play eight games against the teams of the AFC South and NFC South.
If a team’s record relative not to its division but to its conference will take on more importance in a playoff tree constructed based on total record, teams need to play more games in their conference. Ideally, every team would play one game against every other team in its conference — like college conferences did before they became too big to allow that.
The most fair construction of the schedule, if the “Lions” proposal passes, would consist of 15 conference games and two interconference games. But that would reduce the variety of the schedule dramatically.
Our guess? 345 Park Avenue won’t be bothered by such niceties of competitive integrity. The current effort is aimed at making late-season games more interesting and, in turn, more valuable to the networks and, in turn, more valuable to the league.
If an effort to overhaul the schedule is going to happen, it will require a groundswell from the teams. A groundswell strong enough to overcome the inertia of a league off that will not care about the inequity that flows from using apples-and-oranges scheduling to create what will be an apples-to-apples comparison of records.
The best decision, then, will be to kick this greed-driven idea to 2026, and to ask the “Lions” to resubmit their proposal regarding playoff seeding with a companion proposal as to how the scheduling formula will be changed to make the new approach far more fair than it will be if the change if made as of 2025.