Current playoff
system
The 32-team league is divided into two
conferences: the
American Football Conference (AFC) and the
National Football Conference (NFC). As of
2002, each conference is further divided into 4
divisions of 4 teams each. The
tournament brackets are made up of six teams
from each of the league's two conferences,
following the end of the 16-game regular season.
Qualification into the playoffs are as follows:
[1]
The NFL Playoffs. Each of the 4
division winners is seeded 1–4 based
on their W-L-T records. The two
wildcard teams (labeled Wild Card 1
and 2) are seeded 5th and 6th (with
the better of the two having seed 5)
regardless of their records compared
to the 4 division winners.
- The four division champions from each
conference (the team in each division with
the best regular season won-lost-tied
record), which are
seeded 1 through 4 based on their
regular season won-lost-tied record.
- Two
wild card qualifiers (those non-division
champions with the conference's best winning
percentages), which are seeded 5 and 6.
The first round of the playoffs is dubbed the
Wild Card Playoffs (the league in recent
years has also used the term Wild Card
Weekend). The 3rd-seeded division winner
hosts the 6th seed wild card, and the 4th seed
hosts the 5th. The 1 and the 2 seeds from each
conference receive a
bye in the first round, which entitles these
teams to automatically advance to the second
round, the Divisional Playoff games, to
face the Wild Card survivors. Unlike most
tournaments, with a predetermined bracket, each
round of the playoffs is 're-seeded'; the
highest surviving seed always hosts the lowest
surviving seed, the second-highest hosts the
second-lowest, etc. This guarantees each
division winner at least one home playoff game
[2] The
two surviving teams from the Divisional Playoff
games meet in Conference Championship
games, with the winners of those contests going
on to face one another in the
Super Bowl.
If teams are tied (having the same regular
season won-lost-tied record), the playoff
seeding is determined by a set of tiebreaking
rules.[1]
A disadvantage that critics cite in the
current system is that a divisional winner could
host a playoff game against a wild card team
that earned a better regular season record. For
example, the
Jacksonville Jaguars finished the
2005 regular season with a 12-4 record, but
only qualified as a wild card team (the AFC
South title was claimed by the 14-2
Indianapolis Colts) and thus had to face the
New England Patriots, the AFC East division
champions with a record of 10-6, at
Gillette Stadium, in
Foxborough, Massachusetts.
[3]
Since the 2002 expansion to 8 divisions,
there have been calls to expand the playoffs to
14 or even 16 teams. Proponents of expansion
note the increased revenue that could be gained
from 2 or even 4 more playoff games. They also
note that the 12-team playoff system was
implemented when the league only had 28 teams.
With expansion to 32 teams, there has been an
effective loss of access to the playoff
structure. The opposition to such a move notes
that an expansion of the playoffs would "water
down" the field by giving access to
lower-caliber teams. One can point to the
NBA Playoffs/a> and the
NHL Playoffs where 16 teams qualify for the
post season, and there is often decreased
emphasis on regular season performance.[4][5]
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