ALLEN PARK -- After tweaking their proposal to change the playoff seeding format, the Detroit Lions have withdrawn it before the vote happened due to a lack of support.
NFL Network reports it’s something that could come up again in the future, especially if the league shifts to a 18-game regular season.
It was a proposal that the Lions partnered with the league on, per team president Rod Wood. The initial version of the proposal was tabled at NFL owners meetings last month. But a tweaked version was set to be voted on at the latest round of league meetings in Minneapolis.
The tweaked proposal called for the seeding to remain the same for the wild-card round, with division winners getting homefield advantage. But it would have re-seeded the teams based on win-loss record in the divisional round, with non-division winners with better records getting a chance to play at home after all.
If the rule had been in place last year, the Lions would have faced the 10-7 Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round, instead of the 12-5 Washington Commanders.
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Wood said the idea gained steam after Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown told reporters near the end of last season that he didn’t understand how a 14-3 team would be a road wild-card team as the No. 5 seed. The Lions avoided that fate, beating the Minnesota Vikings to the wild-card round as the first 14-win No. 5 seed.
Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, reached out to the Lions after seeing St. Brown’s interview, and agreed with him, then asked if the franchise would partner on a proposal about playoff-seedings.
The defense of the proposal was that it would reward “the best-performing teams from the regular season,” and add more excitement to those two final weeks before the postseason.
“Because if you’re in Week 17 or Week 18 right now, you could have your seeding locked up,” Wood said of the team’s reasoning last month. “But if you thought you could jump a division winner or a division winner thought they could get passed, they’re going to play out the whole season, which I think is better for the whole league, which is the real benefit I saw in proposing it.”