The Commissioner’s arm-twisting powers only go so far.
He wants to revamp playoff seeding, in order to make late-season games more compelling. The pending proposal would take the seven playoff qualifiers and seed them based on record. Division champions would no longer be guaranteed the No. 4 seed, at worst.
Via Mark Maske of the Washington Post, new playoff seeding “remains a long shot.” As one unnamed source told Maske, “I doubt it on that. Not this year.”
As PFT has reported, Commissioner Roger Goodell wants it. As Lions president Rod Wood has admitted, the league office instigated Detroit to make the proposal.
The measure was tabled in March, because it was destined to fail. Apparently, it’s destined to fail again.
Which means it likely will be withdrawn without a vote.
Any effort to minimize division championship and maximize relative status in the conference would require, if the league cares about competitive fairness, a revamp of the current scheduling formula to emphasize conference play — and possibly to ditch the playing of six games against three division rivals.