Apr 1, 2025; Palm Beach, FL, USA; NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addresses the media at the NFL Annual League Meeting at The Breakers. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell Eyeing New Playoff Seeding Format To Maintain Excitement Even in Week 18

The NFL playoff seedings could undergo a change with Roger Goodell backing the idea!

Apr 1, 2025; Palm Beach, FL, USA; NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addresses the media at the NFL Annual League Meeting at The Breakers. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

The NFL regular season is an 18-week long period where teams play 17 games each with one bye week. But, even though the season is a short one, the intensity and excitement that is felt in the initial weeks starts to die down as we get to the final couple of weeks.

The start of a new season is always filled with hope amongst teams and fans alike with the ambition to perform well in a bid to make the playoffs. However, as the weeks go by, a number of teams start falling out of the postseason contention, and near the end, many teams have already booked their passage to the next phase. It is at this time, that the priorities of teams start changing.

Teams that have already progressed to the postseason begin resting players, coaches take things easy to avoid injuries to their starters, and try something different that otherwise they would not do, and as a result of which, the viewership suffers. To combat this issue and to keep the excitement level up to the mark even in the final week of the regular season, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is leaning towards a change in the playoffs seeding format.

What Is the Format Change Goodell Has in Mind?

At last week’s NFL owners meeting, the Detroit Lions put forth the point of changing the postseason seeding format in an attempt to bring in more viewership towards the end of the season. It has now come to light that the NFL commissioner could in reality be the driving force behind the proposition.

In addition to teams benching their starters and not taking the games as seriously as they should, the other key factor to consider is that all division winners are automatically guaranteed a minimum of one home game to start the postseason. This is also seen as a disadvantage to teams that have more wins in a different division but do not get home field because of another division winner who may have less number of wins.

Let us consider an example from last season. The Lions and the Vikings finished with 15 and 14 wins respectively. Thus, Detroit won the NFC North ahead of Minnesota and with it claimed home-field advantage. At the same time, the Los Angeles Rams who belong to the NFC West finished with 10 wins, but the Rams received the 4th seed and home-field advantage while the Vikings dropped down to number 5 and traveled to SoFi center to play the Rams in their home.

Consequently, the NFL would like to implement a new system wherein the games remain interesting till the last week of the regular season and teams with more wins are also able to have home-field advantage.

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Will the New System Really Make Things More Interesting?

On the one hand, while there is a case that teams may have to keep the same level of intensity even in the last couple of games irrespective of whether or not they have qualified for the postseason, the flip side is that some games could still end up being a dead-rubber type of match.

For instance, staying with the same example as above with the Lions and Vikings, we can reach a conclusion that this week 18 game in 2024 could have drawn much less viewership under the new format since both the teams had already qualified for the playoffs and would have earned home field advantage due to their superior number of wins over the other teams. Of course, the advantage of a bye in the Wild Card round would have been up for grabs, but for teams not vying for a bye, the result wouldn’t make much difference either way.

In the end, it is up to the franchise owners to decide on the fate of this proposition but it seems as though the commissioner of the league is on board with the idea especially when he voiced his intrigue over the idea at the end of the owners meeting last week.

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Devavrat Kulkarni

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I am a content writer for the NFL team, and joined The Playoffs after working with Sportskeeda and NFL Analysis as an NFL writer. After starting my professional career as a French-to-English translator, working as a content writer is a new adventure for me. I started out in the sports media field for two main reasons: my love for sports in general, especially the NFL, NBA, and Tennis, as well as my passion for writing. The best part of this job is that I get to write a variety of pieces with the freedom to explore content from various angles. It also enables me to stay up to date with the sporting world, which otherwise can be difficult to do in the day-to-day grind. In a world full of chaos, sports unite and entertain like nothing else!