I can’t wrap my head around this silly little emphasis being placed on winning a division. Divisions are only 4 teams. You’re better than 3 other teams? That’s weird. The Bills were pretty good but think about this. They get to play 6 games against garbage opponents last year. How was winning the AFC East last year anything of value? It was pretty much a measure of “hey, great job on not being absolute garbage like the other 3 teams in the division.” It’s just silly to me.
Technically the Chiefs traded up for the pick they used on Mahomes, so is it Draft, Trade, or both? (Similar for E. Manning & Flacco).
No I think it still matters to be division winners. Sorry ass teams hang banners in their stadiums to acknowledge the achievement. But once the playoffs are set like the NCAA they should seed the teams based on merit and not give a team a higher seed because they won the Big Sky Conference.
Divisions are the best way to organize schedules. The best compromise would be to say a division winner is guaranteed to be one of the 7 playoff teams in the conference but seed according to record. I don’t think anyone said a division championship automatically has no value. Sometimes it does. It’s just not an absolute that it has value.
Yup if you make seeding only on record, divisions become symbolic only. Chiefs for example would quit worrying about Bronco's/Chargers/ Raiders and Eagles vs Cowboys would just be another game and so on. To me those rivalries add a lot to the sport. Those promoting the change want to pretend those rivalries would continue by magic but they won't. Fixing things that aren't broke is simply a bad idea and wish folks would quit bring them up.
Why are divisions the best way to organise schedules? Why would the Eagles need to play the Cowboys twice?
It presents easy scheduling pods so that you can rotate. Here is your intraleague division schedule this year. Here is your inter league division schedule.
The division winner gets the spot. I was saying division winner is guaranteed a playoff spot. If they month get in at 10-7 let the head to head winner host.
Essentially you're saying a 8-9 division winner should get in ahead of a 10-7 non division-winning team but potentially a different 10-7 non division-winning team could end up hosting the 8-9 division winner in the wild-card round. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not consistent.
Yeah you can’t come up with any system that is fool proof. Unfortunately, you’ll have some poor teams make the field but now they’ll be seeded 7 instead of seeded 4. This ultimately gives the 5 seed an auto win and that messes up the reseed.
It’s not though. Because of the way the NFL schedules it becomes 6 division games, 4 cross over league games, and 4 cross division in the league games that rotate. The divisions are the template used to schedule 14 of the 17 games. Prior year finish impacts the other 3.
But that doesn’t mean much if the division you play in is poor.
I don’t really care who brought the proposal. I’m just trying to assess fairness and the best way of seeding playoff teams.
Agreed. They’re more likely to add teams than to take them away. I also don’t like one bye. Would almost like to see them add another wild card to have no byes over one bye.
