NFL Wild Card Weekend a Dud
Starting last season, the NFL added an additional playoff team to each conference and began calling the Wild Card Weekend the Super Wild Card Weekend. So far it hasn’t just gone poorly, it’s gone super poorly. (Yes, I know that joke is awful. Super awful.)
I’m coming at this from a game quality perspective, not a ratings perspective, because the ratings are for the NFL in general are fantastic. Of the top 50 television broadcasts last year, 48 were NFL games. More games equals more money, so on paper an additional playoff game makes a lot of sense. When you’re putting out a subpar product though eventually people will stop tuning in so frequently. And that’s what the No. 2 vs. No. 7 matchups on Super Wild Card Weekend have been so far—subpar.
This year, we got the No. 2 Bucs walloping the No. 7 Eagles, 31-15, in a game the Bucs were winning 31-0 after three quarters before the Eagles managed 15 garbage-time points. We were also treated to the No. 2 Chiefs crushing the No. 7 Steelers, 42-21. Neither of these games were close. Neither the Bucs or Eagles deserved to be in the playoffs. As football fans, we’d have been better off if these games had simply not existed and the two No. 2 seeds received bye weeks.
This season, the problem was amplified by the fact that the other four games were just not very good. The Bills and Rams both won handily in their matchups and, while the other two games were closer in terms of score, both were average games at best in terms of overall quality. In both cases, the team that seemed better and in control for the vast majority of the game won. But instead of it being two bad games and two average games, as it would’ve been in the old playoff format, it was four bad games and two average games thanks to the seven seeds.
This whole issue with an additional playoff team makes sense— a team with the second best record in its conference playing at home is probably going to crush a team that barely snuck into the postseason. But, and this is to mainly directed to Roger Goodell and NFL owners who I know are big readers of this new blog, please do not add an eighth playoff team per conference and force No. 1 seeds to play them. There will come a point of diminishing returns when it comes to Americans and their NFL games. We’re definitely not there yet, but give me a 20 game season with half the league making the playoffs and we may be on our way.