Why the NFL Should Stop Giving Division Winners Home Games
WHY THE NFL SHOULD STOP GIVING DIVISION WINNERS HOME GAMES – It’s time for the NFL playoffs, which means it’s time for the worst rule in the NFL to rear its ugly head again. No, not the ridiculous rule of an unrecovered fumble out of the opposing end zone being a touchback — although we’ll probably see that too during the playoffs. This refers to the NFL’s ridiculous insistence on giving division winners automatic home games.
Ever since the league went to eight divisions instead of six, this has been a massive problem that the league refuses to fix. Each year, we go through the same song and dance, where the league pretends there’s no issue with a team that won its weak division getting to host a team that was four wins better than it.
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It’s bad enough that the NFL’s tiebreakers sometimes lead to lower seeds getting a more favorable matchup. But by insisting on division winners being seeded no lower than 4, the NFL makes a mockery of its playoff system.
Here’s why this system doesn’t work, and what needs to be done instead.
The Current System Rewards Mediocrity — Or Worse
On the radio show on Saturday, I said that it was in Baltimore’s best interest to lose to Cleveland. That’s because if the Ravens did lose, they would be in position to drop to the No. 5 seed and play a collapsing Houston instead of having to play Pittsburgh or Los Angeles. The Ravens did not take my advice, and now they’ve got a third meeting with Pittsburgh. It’s at home, at least, but the Steelers are much more problematic than the Texans.
You’ll notice this does not occur in other sports. And that’s because it happened there once before. Twenty years ago, the NBA used to prioritize division winners as its top three seeds. This changed after the 2005-06 NBA season, when the two strongest teams in the NBA’s Western Conference were the San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks. Thanks to the league rules at the time, the 63-19 Spurs were the No. 1 seed as the Southwest Division champion, while the 60-22 Mavericks would be No. 4. Meanwhile, the 44-38 Denver Nuggets were the No. 3 seed as Northwest Division champions.
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That presented a problem for teams No. 5 and No. 6. Both the Memphis Grizzlies and the Los Angeles Clippers faced the position of moving up to No. 5 and having to open against the Mavericks, or dropping to No. 6 and getting to play the Nuggets. You can see where this is going: the Clippers made no attempt to even pretend to try to win their next-to-last game with the Grizzlies, securing the No. 6 seed. L.A. then bumped out Denver in five games, while Memphis got swept by eventual Western Conference champion Dallas.
And the NBA, to its credit, wisely abandoned that foolishness and stopped giving division winners a top three seed. Following that fiasco, the NBA took away division winners’ protected seed and instead said they would seed 1-8 by record. The NFL, however, still hasn’t learned anything, resulting in a system where teams have clear benefits to throw a game.
The System Disincentivizes the Regular Season
The Los Angeles Rams didn’t bother to go all out to win their final game, and why should they have? The Rams needed Tampa Bay to lose to have a chance to move up to the No. 3 seed. When that didn’t happen, the finale with Seattle was totally meaningless. The Rams knew they’d be the No. 4 seed no matter what.
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Now, if the Rams had to worry about that home game, they might have approached things differently. They’d have been forced to use Matthew Stafford to try to earn that game at home and get the seed they wanted. If a loss could have knocked them down to seventh, they go all out to beat the Seahawks.
That could have meant better matchups around the league. Green Bay might have pushed harder for a win if it was playing for a home game. Houston won its last game, but the Texans might have played with more urgency against Baltimore if they could have fallen to sixth or seventh in the AFC. Changing the rule would mean more meaningful games in Week 18.
The System Gives Advantages to the Wrong Teams
Bringing up Houston again, Cal McNair has hit the absolute jackpot. He’s surrounded by total incompetence in Shad Khan (Jacksonville), Jim Irsay (Indianapolis) and Amy Adams Strunk (Tennessee), which has helped the Texans win two AFC South titles despite being in a rebuild themselves.
However, that should not be rewarded with a home game. And time and time again, we’ve seen teams wrongly get a home game and parlay their luck into undeserved success.
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In 2008, Arizona became the biggest offender of this when it snagged a No. 4 seed by virtue of winning the absolutely putrid NFC West. Those Cardinals were 6-0 against their own division and 3-7 against everyone else. But they got a home game against Atlanta they didn’t deserve, then got a second home game against No. 6 Philadelphia (which also had a better record) and parlayed that into a fluke Super Bowl appearance.
2011 saw two large failures of the system. The 12-4 Steelers had to travel to 8-8 Denver, which meant playing without Ryan Clark because his anemia prevented him from playing at Denver’s altitude. If that game was in Pittsburgh, Clark could have minimized Tim Tebow’s passing windows. In the NFC, the Giants got an undeserved home game against Atlanta, played outdoors in frigid New Jersey instead of inside the Falcons’ dome. New York parlayed that into a Super Bowl win, going from 9-7 to champions.
It happens year after year, and it makes a mockery of the regular season.
The System Punishes the Best Teams
Fans and writers complained about the 14-3 Minnesota Vikings having to travel to the 10-7 Los Angeles Rams, and rightly so. The Vikings earned the right to play at home by racking up 14 wins. It’s not their fault they share a division with the NFC’s best team and the Rams get three mediocre-to-bad teams in their division.
But if the Vikings win that game, this has the potential to be highly unfair to Detroit. The Lions are 15-2 and earned the NFC’s top seed. And if the Vikings are the only road team to win, Detroit’s reward would be a 15-3 Minnesota. Meanwhile, Philadelphia, the No. 2 seed, would get to play an 11-7 Tampa Bay.
That is patently unfair to the Lions. There’s a contingent that thinks winning your division should supersede everything, and it’s not a totally unreasonable argument at first. But when it punishes the No. 1 seed, it becomes unreasonable and wrong. The Lions earned the top seed in the NFC; they deserve to play the worst remaining team in the divisional round, not the best one because of unfair seeding.
Fixing the System
There are two potential ways to fix this. The first is the most simple, straightforward and fair: seed everyone by record, with division champions getting an automatic bid to the playoffs. If we had that system in place, we’d have the following matchups:
NFC
7. Los Angeles (10-7) at 2. Minnesota (14-3)
6. Tampa Bay (10-7) at 3. Philadelphia (14-3)
5. Green Bay (11-6) at 4. Washington (12-5)
AFC
7. Houston (10-7) at 2. Buffalo (13-4)
6. Denver (10-7) at 3. Baltimore (12-5)
5. Pittsburgh (10-7) at 4. Los Angeles (11-6)
This would rightly reward the Vikings and the Ravens by giving them the matchups they earned with their strong play in the regular season. It would also treat the Lions fairly by ensuring they could not play a better team than Washington in their first playoff game.
Option 2 would be a hybrid solution to placate the “division supersedes everything” crowd: Give them the automatic home game, but reseed by record after round 1. Under this system, if a surviving division winner had a worse record than a surviving wild card, it would be seeded lower and go on the road. You’d still have some unfairness with teams like the Vikings, but at least you would protect someone like the Lions, and you’d ensure that a fluke run gifted by the bracket such as the 2008 Cardinals could never happen again.
It’s flawed, but it’s far less flawed than what the NFL is putting out. The system has been broken for 20+ years and needs to change.
