NFL Expands Playoffs This Season; All It Needs Is a 'This Season'

Assuming the Covid-19 virus doesn't morph into a Grinch in early January, the NFL's annual post-season stampede to the Super Bowl just got a tad more crowded.

Exactly as The Shield wanted.

OGs may need to wait another year for their coveted 17-game schedule, but they barely waited until the ink was dry on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement to implement their expanded playoff wet dream.

 

Besides being awash in dosh, the league has actually bestowed more value on the regular season.

Earning the best record in each conference is now more precious than ever.

 

If nothing else, there should now be no reason for a 10-win team to miss the playoffs.

Over the last decade, here's who woulda been added:

• Five 10-win teams,
• Nine 9-win teams, and
• Six 8-win teams.

Best of all, maybe this will stop critics from pointing to the 2010 season when ...

• the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West and
• hosted the wild-card 11-5 New Orleans Saints, while
• the 10-6 New York Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were nudged right outta the party.

It can't go unsaid, though, that Seattle won in what's now known as the BeastQuake game.

 

 

There's your any given Sunday at work, even if it's now on Saturdays or Mondays.

And from this point onward, that's one less given the AFC and NFC teams with the best records have to concern themselves with:

This means Wild Card Weekend will now be a triple-header on Saturday and Sunday.

Six division winners will face six qualifiers in what'll become the NFL's version of that March Madness opening round. Wall-to-wall games.

They're even bringing Nickelodeon into the act to carry a game. Word.

 

Damn right, SpongeBob will rise to the occasion!

The question now is, who else will?

 

Well, that's what the chalk's gonna say.

The 2010 Seahawks and last year's Kansas City Chiefs are gonna say differently.

Being real, the expanded playoffs put the NFL's competitive balance in a better perspective.

• Soccer leagues everywhere else in the world value the regular-season title as just desserts for a team that's shown its superiority over the long haul; the new NFL format now leans that way.
• Teams without their conference's best record should have a longer gauntlet to run.
• There are supposed to be upsets every now and then; otherwise, why have playoffs?

 

All that's needed now is for the NFL to get to January 2021 to show off its first post-season change in 30 years.

That means it's gotta have a season.

So improve the chances of that happening. Stay home.