Reformat NFL Playoffs? Interesting! But No.

The Lions take a shot anyway

Thanks for reading The Dope.

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The Detroit football club is proposing a significant rule change that, if effectuated by the NFL’s owners, would benefit — well, Detroit, probably. In fairness, though, the Lions aren’t the first team to ask about this.

What the team wants is a change in how the league determines playoff seedings, and we’ll get to that in a moment. But first, understand that Wednesday was the day the NFL made public all of the proposed rules changes for the coming year. The league does this every year, knowing full well that most of the proposals don’t stand a chance because they require yes votes from 24 of the 32 franchise owners, who don’t like each other much and generally can’t agree on dinner.

Probably the most notorious of the proposals for 2025 is the Green Bay Packers’ idea to make the “tush push” illegal, and if you’ve seen any of the Philadelphia Eagles’ games over the past few years, you know what that is about. Best as can be determined, there’s little enthusiasm for actually changing that rule.

But what the Lions are asking is really compelling. They’re proposing to dump the current system of automatically giving each division winner one of the top four seeds in the AFC and NFC. Instead, the NFL would proceed with seedings based strictly on won-lost records.

This proposal could radically realign the playoff brackets in both conferences. It certainly would place a massive premium on winning regular-season games, which some other pro sports long ago decided was a good idea.

It also stands no chance, because the idea has a fatal flaw. Still, excellent try.

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At first blush, this might appear altruistic. Detroit, after all, had the best record in the NFC last season at 15-2 and thus received the No. 1 seed, while its bitter division rival, Minnesota, fell all the way down to No. 5 even though the Vikings went 14-3, finishing there only because Detroit beat them on the final weekend of the regular season.

Clearly, the Lions want their NFC North brethren to be honored for their work. Right?

I mean, no. It’s closer to the truth to suggest that Detroit’s front office people can see that the North is going to be stacked for seasons to come — not just the Lions and Vikes, but the Packers, who were a robust 11-6 in 2024 and went 10-1 outside of their own division — and are trying to get ahead of their future problems.

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Say the Lions go 13-4 next season, but Green Bay jumps up to 14-3 and takes the North. That’d send Detroit tumbling to the 5-seed and going on the road for its first-round playoff game against a team like Tampa Bay or the Rams. (Both won their divisions last season at 10-7.)

Doesn’t seem right. Of course, some version of this scenario happens almost every year in the NFL.

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The league has long held that teams should be rewarded for winning their divisions, even if those divisions stink. There is some history and some thought behind this; one thing the NFL’s owners still apparently desire is that those division rivalries, which are often (but not always) geographic, continue to carry weight.

That they do — to a chubby extreme. Win a division, and you’re guaranteed to land somewhere between 1 and 4 in the playoffs, even if you’re a vastly inferior product. The Bucs in 2022 and Washington in 2020 both won divisions with sub-.500 records; for either team to be rewarded with a home playoff date just makes the league look silly.

That doesn’t happen regularly, though — just often enough for us to notice. One of the larger problems, really, is the NFL’s playoff format in general, which is lumpy gravy right now because the league expanded the field from 12 teams to 14 a few years ago.

Qualifying a seventh team from each conference did what the greedheads wanted it to do: produce more playoff games and drive more playoff broadcast revenue. But under the old six-team format, the top two division winners in each conference received a first-round bye, a neat, orderly reward for a job well done. Now, the No. 2 seed still has to play a game on wild-card weekend — and under the current seeding format, it could draw a really great opponent that is merely guilty of not finishing first.

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So why won’t something as plausible as seeding by W-L record work? The answer lies within the divisions themselves.

If the NFL seeds strictly by records, it runs the risk of actively penalizing teams that play in — or against — tough divisions. As ESPN noted, the Baltimore Ravens in 2012 got the No. 4 seed (and a home playoff game) by winning the rugged AFC North at 10-6. Had the NFL used records to determine the seedings, the Ravens would’ve fallen to a lower seed and been forced to go on the road — despite playing the second-toughest schedule in the AFC that season.

Not fair! It’s also a fact that in addition to the six games it plays within its own division, your favorite club plays four games against one single division in the AFC and four games against one single division in the NFC. You happen to draw a brutal division or two that year, and your record could be made to suffer even if you’re very, very good.

So no, the Lions’ proposal won’t carry the day when the owners get together from March 30 to April 2 in Palm Beach. This same seed-by-record proposal was advanced by the Chargers in 2023, and it went down in flames. I expect a similar playbook in 2025.

Still, it’s interesting to watch leagues try to sort this out. Major League Baseball awards its top three seeds in the AL and NL to its three division winners — but only the top two get a first-round bye. The NBA seeds by straight W-L record, but it includes that dopey play-in round from seeds 7 through 10 in each conference in order to squeeze a few more bucks out of the networks. The NHL’s top 6 seeds in each conference go to the 1-2-3 finishers in the two divisions, and the remaining wild cards are then awarded strictly by record.

In each case, the leagues are trying to find ways to bring equity to playoff systems that are unruly because, by their own hand, the franchise owners grew them so. And really, the NHL probably came the closest to solving all of this.

Way back in 1987, the hockey overlords expanded their playoffs to 16 teams. Pretty forward-thinking, considering there were only 21 teams in the league at the time.

You miss those playoffs, and hey — seeding isn’t your biggest problem.

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