NFL owners should weigh all pros & cons before adding playoff expansion
Playoff expansion is a fact of life in the NFL. The Super Bowl era began with just two playoff games -- the NFL and AFL Championship Games -- prior to the big game to conclude the 1966 season.
It took just one season for the NFL playoff bracket to double in size. Starting in 1967, four teams made the NFL postseason. The AFL expanded on a similar trajectory with two playoffs teams in 1967, then three in 1968 and four in 1969.
Eleven years later in 1978, the NFL playoffs expanded to five teams in each conference. The field expanded to its current format -- 12 playoff teams (six in both the AFC and NFC) in 1990.
That was 30 years ago. Playoff expansion was happening about every 10 years prior to 1990.
The league seems long overdue for more postseason teams. However, the owners shouldn't just consider the league's history and their bottom line prior to voting on whether to include 14 teams in the 2020 NFL playoffs. More playoff teams could greatly change the complexion of the NFL postseason.
The driving force behind playoff expansion and why it will likely pass when the owners vote next week is money. With a seventh playoff team in each conference, there will be six playoff games instead of four on Wild Card Weekend.
That's two extra games of highly-priced playoff tickets, concession stands revenue and the whole works. Even more importantly, it's two additional contests to sell to TV networks.
The TV deals the league agrees to with the networks include playoff games, so it's hard to calculate exact how much two additional Wild Card games are worth. But starting in 2014, ESPN started paying $1.9 billion per season for Monday Night Football, which was a 73 percent increase from the $1.1 billion per season ESPN paid for Monday night games from 2006-13. Part of that major increase was the fact that in the new deal in 2014, ESPN received the right to air one game on Wild Card weekend.
It's probably not accurate to say each additional wild card game will be worth $800 million in TV revenue to the league, but these facts put into perspective how much these additional playoff contests could be worth. This isn't even counting ticket sales.
There's an argument for NFL playoff expansion from a football perspective as well. The last time the league expanded its postseason to 12 teams, there were 28 teams in the league. That means about 42.9 percent of the NFL teams in 1990 made the playoffs.
In 2020, if 14 of the 32 NFL franchises make the postseason, that's 43.8 percent of the squads playing in January. That's an increase from 37.5 percent of the NFL teams in the 2019 playoffs.
From a monetary and numbers standpoint, playoff expansion sounds natural, but it could have a negative impact as well.
There's a reason why Thursday Night Football isn't very popular. It's a watered-down product because teams only have three days to prepare, but the league doesn't care all that much because it makes millions from the TV deal.
Watering down one regular season game every week is one thing -- making it easier to earn a playoff bid as a money grab is even more problematic. A seventh playoff team increases the likelihood of a team with a 9-7 or 8-8 record getting hot in late January and then making the Super Bowl.
This past season, the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers would have been the two No. 7 seeds in the NFC and AFC, respectively. Neither deserved to make the playoffs, especially the Steelers, who lost their last three games.
There have been a few occasions where 10-6 or even 11-5 teams have been left out of the playoffs. In those years, having a seventh postseason team in each conference would have been great, but there's a much greater chance the seventh seed will be 8-8 than 10-6.
Only two of the last 12 seventh seeds in each conference since 2014 reached 10 wins. While more playoff games on Wild Card Weekend would certainly be entertaining, giving more teams with eight or nine wins a chance at the Super Bowl in January, honestly, is not ideal.
Not to mention, the new 14-team setup would mean only the No. 1 seed receives a bye. In the AFC this past January, the Kansas City Chiefs would have played the Steelers in the proposed new playoff bracket.
The Chiefs would have likely beaten the Steelers, but playing any type of game increases the chance of injury. Would Kansas City have suffered an injury that changed the complexion of the 2019 season's playoffs had it played on Wild Card weekend?
The new playoff bracket places even more emphasis on earning the No. 1 seed for the postseason. It also creates little difference between the No. 2 and 3 seeds in each conference, which could consequently lead to more teams resting players in Week 17 if they can't earn the top seed.
This year, the best part of Week 17 was Miami upsetting New England and forcing the Patriots to play on Wild Card Weekend. It was the highlight of Miami's season. Do the owners want to jeopardize taking a moment like that away?
For millions of dollars, the answer is undoubtably yes. But there will be consequences to expanding the NFL playoffs to 14 teams, and a lot of them aren't good.
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