Remember when the Seattle Seahawks shocked the NFL world when they upset the reigning Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints in the 2010 season? Marshawn Lynch’s ‘Beastquake’ moment sealed a famous win for Pete Carroll’s 7-9 NFC West champions against the 11-5 Saints. We’d never seen a sub .500 team win a division
But there’s a team that wants to put an end to Wild Card teams playing on the road against division champions with inferior records.
Enter the Detroit Lions, who won an epic NFC North race at 15-2 by getting past the 14-3 Minnesota Vikings, whose “reward” for such a wonderful year was playing a road game (turned neutral due to the wildfires) against the 10-7 Los Angeles Rams. It’s hardly the first time we’ve seen WC teams have better records than the division champs they’re playing, but the Lions have seen enough.
Here was their rule proposal:
Effect: Seeds non-division champion teams higher than division champion teams in the playoffs if they have a better regular season record.
Reason: Competitive equity. Provides excitement and competition in late season games. Rewards the best-performing teams from the regular season.
Detroit is not the first team to propose this, as ESPN’s Kevin Seifert noted:
The Los Angeles Chargers made a similar proposal in 2023, but it did not receive much support. Any NFL team can make a rule change proposal for consideration by owners. The proposals require at least 24 votes to be approved, but owners are generally more likely to approve proposals that are endorsed by the competition committee rather than individual teams.
In recent seasons we’ve seen the 7-8-1 Carolina Panthers, 8-9 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and 7-9 Washington Football Team all have home playoff games by winning their extremely sorry divisions. It’s considered unfair for a team with a better record to go on the road against sub-.500 opposition who won divisions much weaker then theirs.
Even on the other end, the 14-3 Vikings against the 10-7 Rams is less about the Rams having some poor record and more about how much better Minnesota’s record was over the season. The Seahawks somewhat similarly were 11-5 and had to play a road game against the 9-7 Philadelphia Eagles in their most recent playoff win.
Detroit’s proposal is specifically to seed the teams 1-7 based on record (with applicable tiebreakers). In last season’s example, the Vikings would’ve been the No. 3 seed and the Rams would’ve been the No. 7 seed.
There is precedent for this change in another sports league. The National Basketball Association stopped giving division champs a top-four seed back in 2015-16, but prior to the rule change home court advantage wasn’t guaranteed for division champions depending on record. Divisions still exist in the NBA but the top six teams by record automatically qualify for the playoffs, while teams seeded 7-10 compete in the Play-In round for the seventh and eighth seeds.
What say you? Leave the playoffs as is and value winning your division with an automatic home game? What about the whole reseeding idea? Sound off in the comments! The Seahawks have benefited greatly from the existing NFL rules but that doesn’t mean you may agree the rules should remain in place.
Poll
Should NFL division champions automatically get a home playoff game?
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Yes, leave as is
(0 votes)
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No, reseed by record from 1-7 regardless of division champ status
(0 votes)
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They should automatically clinch a top-4 seed, but no automatic home playoff game
(0 votes)
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