It’s been over a year since the NFL decided to expand the postseason to 14 teams, adding the seventh seed for the AFC and NFC. The change was made before the 2020 NFL season owing to a new collective bargaining agreement along with the 17-game season that would come into effect during the 2021 campaign.
The first 17-game season could be perceived as a success. It ended with a win-and-in matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday Night Football that checked all the boxes for excitement and playoff implications. That sort of late-season excitement isn’t exclusive to an additional game week, but it certainly doesn’t hurt the resume. From a business standpoint, it makes sense too. It’s another week of televised football to sell to networks – and the fact that the NFL’s TV ratings jumped 10 percent to their highest in six years proves that point.
While the regular season has shown the benefits of the new CBA deal, the expansion of the playoffs to 14 total teams has so far been a total disappointment. Financially, that’s not true. The NFL has been able to add two more postseason games to its schedule, and similar to the extra televised games in the regular season, the two Wildcard games yield untold potential.
Despite that, the level of competition produced by the two extra wildcard games has fallen incredibly short. In the last two years, there have been four seven-seeds: the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears in 2020, and the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles in 2021. The combined records of those four teams were 37-28-1 with a total points differential of plus-95. On paper, that’s not terrible. Three of those teams had winning records – the Bears might be the last ever 8-8 team to make the playoffs in NFL history, which feels very poignant.
What is equally poignant, however, is that those four teams all failed to progress past the Wildcard stage of the playoffs. It feels slightly unfair to group the Colts in with the pack – they feel like the lone expectation of a deserving team, but the combined margin of victory across the four games was 52 points – an average margin of 13 points. And that’s partly because the Colts only lost by a field goal against the Bills.
Aside from the Colts though, the Bears, Steelers, and Eagles looked outclassed in their respective matchups. Those three teams were 15th, 24th, and 15th in DVOA and only the Colts and Bears had top-10 defenses in EPA, though none of the teams had a top-10 offense in EPA.
That’s not a death sentence, nor is it a requirement to make the postseason, but when packaged together, it shows the disparity at hand. The current seeding also requires the seventh seed to play the second seed. Over the last two years, the four second-seeds have a combined record of 50-16 with a positive points differential of plus-545. They’ve also all been top-10 in DVOA with top-10 offenses.
It’s not a fair fight and that translates onto the field. It’s the playoffs, competition should be at its absolute peak. Instead, three of the games featuring seventh seeds have felt more like non-essential viewing. The level of competition has been mediocre at best, and outright unfair at worst. The NFL is in no position to change the formatting before the next CBA, but the expanded playoffs have so far been a real disappointment.
-Thomas Valentine
Twitter: @ThomasValenfine