For a day in mid-May, four months before the season starts, today was sure an eventful one in the NFL. They talked about Bill Belichick's ridiculous extra point thing and the ridiculous extra playoff teams thing, as well as doing something actually important--choosing the site of Super Bowl LII.
Let's start with the stupidest one. The owners voted to try out, for the first two weeks of the preseason, moving extra points from the 2-yard line to the 20. Why we need to turn extra points into field goals I'm not exactly sure, so I hope this is the end of the discussion about this. This, of course, is nothing that anyone ever considered a "problem" until Bill Belichick mentioned it. So, I figure trying it is a way to shut Belichick up. And when it doesn't work (because it doesn't make any sense), they can say, "at least we tried it."
Now moving on to the business of Super Bowl LII. The candidates were New Orleans, Indianapolis and Minnesota. And the winner is...Minnesota. Good call. New Orleans and Indianapolis both just hosted the Super Bowl, and the Vikings are building a new stadium. This one's going to have a retractable roof, so the cold weather thing isn't going to be an issue. The NFL likes new stadiums, especially ones that the teams build themselves. This is the Vikings' reward for doing just that. It also gives the NFL a chance to go somewhere different. It's good to see other cities breaking into that New Orleans-Miami-Phoenix rotation.
And it looks like Super Bowl LII will be the culmination of a 14-team tournament. Does the NFL need expanded playoffs? No. Are expanded playoffs inevitable? Yes. But, fortunately, it's not happening until next year at the earliest.
Delaying the playoff increase is the right call. When Bud Selig added the wild card games in 2012, the MLB schedule was already made. But he badly wanted those wild card games, so instead of waiting a year like he should've, he shoehorned them into the schedule. And the result was disastrous. You had the top seed starting the Division Series on the road, and the Yankees ended up having home games on five consecutive days. In the playoffs! Last year, when they were actually able to build the wild card games into the schedule, everything worked much better. Whether or not MLB's wild card games are necessary is a different issue.
As I already noted, the extra two playoff games are inevitable. They'll put a lot more money in the owners' pockets. And the owners really like money. The players won't budge on the 18-game schedule, so this is the trade-off. Jerry Jones seems to think the owners can simply decide to do this without the union's approval, but you'd have to think that Mr. Brilliant Commissioner isn't dumb enough to make this move without running it by the players. For their part, the players don't seem to have much of an issue with an extra wild card team in each conference anyway. Especially if it means they can get a week chopped off the preseason.
Most football fans would probably say they're against expanded playoffs, but at the same time, you know people are going to gobble up two extra football games to watch. Especially in January. One of the problems that needs to be figured out is when to schedule these two extra games. There's an open slot at 1:00 on Saturday and an open slot on Sunday night. You know one's going to be a Sunday night game. So, that leaves us with the other extra wild card game. Saturday at 1:00 seems too obvious, but they might make a push to put that second game on Monday night. If you ask me, though, it seems incredibly unfair to make two teams play a Monday night playoff game then presumably travel for what would have to be a Sunday Divisional game. Especially if their opponent played on Saturday. That's one of the reasons they did away with the Monday night game in Week 17 in the first place.
Expanded playoffs are definitely happening, so I've made my peace with them. It's like the expanded NCAA Tournament, which ended up not being as bad as we all made it out to be. And I'm sure they'll figure out a schedule that works for everybody, including the TV networks. Three Saturday, three Sunday makes the most sense and would be the most fair, but which networks get those other two games is the big question. My guess...CBS and FOX each get two afternoon games, NBC gets the Sunday night game, and the Saturday/Monday night game is on ESPN (basically, an extra week of the regular schedule TV-wise), then they each get one in the Divisional Playoffs.
The concerns about diluting the playoff field by adding two wild card teams do seem a little silly. Every year in the NFL, there's very little difference between the second wild card team in each conference and the team that just missed getting in. And while it does increase the likelihood of an 8-8 playoff team, it also serves to almost guarantee that a 10-6 team (like this year's Cardinals) doesn't end up missing out. We've had so many 9-7/10-6 teams end up in the Super Bowl in recent years, too, that it's clear the difference between these teams isn't that great. I don't think adding an extra team in each conference will change that.
There's one last element of the expanded playoffs that nobody has really mentioned, but is very significant, and might be one of the reasons for the discussions. If there's an extra team in each conference, that means only one team gets a bye. So, the No. 1 seed doesn't just get home field advantage. They're the only team that doesn't have to play on Wild Card Weekend.
Teams should be rewarded for having the best record in their conference, and they are. But that advantage isn't as significant as it should be. That's why everybody made such a big deal about the Seattle-Denver matchup. It was just the second time in 20 years that both No. 1 seeds made it to the Super Bowl. So, you can bet, that it was in the back of the owners' minds to make that 1-seed a little more valuable.
That's not why they're expanding the playoffs. The owner of the 7-seed isn't worried about getting the 1-seed to the Super Bowl. Especially since he thinks his team has just as good a shot. Ultimately, though, this is about money. There's more to be had, and who's gonna say no to that?
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