Dave’s Football Blog

I am now going to fuck with the way you think about the NFL Playoffs.

I do this because I’m not all that interested in the playoffs themselves. Sure, there are interesting stories here — Could Eric Mangini outcoach Bill Belichick again? Could Larry Johnson outscore the entire Colts’ offense by himself? Could Jeff Garcia be better for the Eagles than Donovan McNabb? Could the Giants please hurry up and self-destruct already? — but since I have no horses in this race and fantasy football season is over, my interest level in diminishing rapidly. I was more interested in Boise Fuckin’ State in the Fiesta Bowl than I am in any of these Wild Card games. Horrible.

So I got to thinking about the whole format of the NFL Playoffs and how it hasn’t really changed much since the merger. Sure, you have one more division winner and two Wild Cards now, but it’s still the same single-elimination seeded bracket it’s always been. What if it were different? What if the NFL postseason was more like the postseason in other forms of football?

Take the Australian Football League, for example. This is what the AFL Finals Series bracket looks like:

Take a moment to get your head around that one. It’s based on something called the McIntyre Final Eight System, which rewards the top teams in the regular season by giving them another shot if they blow their first game. In the AFL’s system, the top four seeds could actually lose their first game and still make it to the finals and win the title.

That actually happened last September, too. The #4 seed Sydney Swans beat the top-seeded West Coast Eagles in the opening round, 85-84, but the Eagles won their next two games and met Sydney again in the Grand Final, which West Coast won by the exact same score, 85-84. Most fans agreed the two Sydney-West Coast matches were the best in the series.

You know what? This system would be perfect for the NFL. Sure, it might let more mediocre teams into the postseason, but guess what? Mediocre teams are in the playoffs now. Why not give more teams a chance? That’s what Lamar Hunt spend the last year of his life lobbying for, right?

With this system, all the division winners get rewarded. No longer would they be one-and-done like they are now; instead, they could lose their first game and still get to the Super Bowl. Does it decrease the drama of the playoffs? Of course not. It just gives division winners one more chance, which they earned with their successful regular season.

Plus, if the NFL used this system, we would get an extra week of playoff football (Woohoo!), and we’d see more (and more interesting) games on the first weekend. Take a look at these opening round games:

AFC
New England Patriots at San Diego Chargers
Indianapolis Colts at Baltimore Ravens
Cincinnati Bengals at New York Jets
Denver Broncos at Kansas City Chiefs

NFC
Seattle Seahawks at Chicago Bears
Philadelphia Eagles at New Orleans Saints
Carolina Panthers at Dallas Cowboys
Green Bay Packers at New York Giants

Admit it — you’d like to see some of those games, wouldn’t you? And if the Colts lost in in the first round again, I’m sure the NFL wouldn’t mind giving Posterboy Manning another chance against the winner of the Broncos-Chiefs game. He can only choke so many times in January, right?

Of course, if the NFL really wanted to extend the postseason, it might consider a group-stage, knockout-stage system used by Association football. That would create a “second season” of sorts where the top teams all play each other once, and the top teams from each group advance to the bracket. The home team is determined by the group seeding. Yes, that means the top seeds get three home games each. Why not? They earned it…

GROUP STAGE

AFC Group A
1. San Diego Chargers
2. Indianapolis Colts
3. New York Jets
4. Denver Broncos

AFC Group A
1. Baltimore Ravens
2. New England Patriots
3. Kansas City Chiefs
4. Cincinnati Bengals

NFC Group A
1. Chicago Bears
2. Philadelphia Eagles
3. Dallas Cowboys
4. Green Bay Packers

NFC Group B
1. New Orleans Saints
2. Seattle Seahawks
3. New York Giants
4. Carolina Panthers

KNOCKOUT STAGE

Game 1: AFC Group A 2nd place at AFC Group B 1st Place
Game 2: AFC Group B 2nd place at AFC Group A 1st Place
Game 3: NFC Group A 2nd place at NFC Group B 1st Place
Game 4: NFC Group B 2nd place at NFC Group A 1st Place

AFC Championship: Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner
NFC Championship: Game 3 winner vs. Game 4 winner

In this format, instead of one Wild Card round before the divisional playoffs, you get eight games of high importance every weekend for three weeks — perfect opportunity to extend Sunday night football through January, and more games with more teams means more TV cash for the league. Roger Goodell would have to like that, right?

So when actual NFL Playoffs get started this weekend, think about how they might look in these formats, rather than the boring old seeded bracket we have now. All in all, I think we football fans are getting hosed.

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