As part of their discussions over the new collective bargaining agreement, the NFL and NFL Players Association agreed to expand the playoff field starting with the 2020 postseason. The league’s 32 owners voted to increase the number of playoff teams from 12 to 14 just a few weeks later, with this decision being implemented later in the 2020 season.
At the time, SB Nation asked fans whether or not the playoff field would become better or worse adding a seventh team in each conference. The majority of participants — 57 percent — voted for the latter option.
Nearly two years later, fans’ opinions have changed slightly. According to the latest report from SB Nation Reacts According to a survey, 57 percent of fans now think expanding the playoffs was a good idea.
This opinion is based on the experience of two playoff series and four games featuring seventh-ranked teams. It could be argued that the number of fans approving the expansion would have been higher if these four competitions had been more competitive.
So far, after all, the seventh-ranked teams in both conferences haven’t covered themselves in glory: They’ve lost all four of their games by an average of nearly two touchdowns.
In 2020, 10-7 Indianapolis Colts lost a match 27-24 to 14-3 Buffalo Bills while the 8-9 Chicago Bear were beaten 21-9 by the New Orleans Saints. These two contests were very competitive compared to this year’s: 9-7-1 Pittsburgh Steelers and 9-8 Philadelphia Eagles lost their matches against Kansas City Chiefs And Tampa Bay Buccaneers with final scores of 42-21 and 31-15, respectively.
The fear when the playoffs were expanded was that the tournament would be watered down while giving the top-ranked teams a huge advantage, with only one bye remaining in each conference. So far, these fears have proven to be well-founded.
In 2020, the seventh seeds fared relatively well in their wild card losses, but they were still beaten. The top-seeded Chiefs and Buccaneers, meanwhile, qualified for the Super Bowl.
This year, the seventh-ranked teams were both eliminated during the wild card weekend. Whether or not they are the top seeds – the Tennessee Titans And Green Bay Packers – will advance to the title match this time around, that remains to be seen; they are in a better situation than the other six teams still standing.
Clearly, though, two years is too small a sample size to make a proper judgment on the future of the expanded playoff field. One thing is certain, however: this situation will not be reversed anytime soon. After all, the NFL expected its annual revenue to increase by $150 million by adding two additional playoff participants and games.
However, these have been far from competitive so far, meaning discussions over the 14-team format will continue.
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