Extra NFL playoff teams?

Per Adam Schefter, it looks like we have a decent chance of an updated NFL playoff structure as early as 2020, with seven teams in each conference making the playoffs instead of six, meaning only one bye. The new plan would also add a 17th regular-season game. (Yes, this all assumes the new CBA gets passed, so perhaps we’re jumping the gun… but it sounds likely.)

First off, I hate it. Seven playoff teams in each conference is dumb. The league’s current setup, which has four games each of the first two playoff weekends and rewards a pair of teams in each conference, is elegant and symmetrical. Going to eight might water things down, but it would also present nice symmetry. Seven? The 1-seeds will have a huge advantage every year (remember, we haven’t had a team that played on Wild Card weekend in the Super Bowl since the Ravens won the whole thing back in 2013). It’s messy, it’s inelegant, and it makes me sad.

For fantasy, this is more interesting. Most leagues of course wrap thing up in Week 16, because Week 17 is so often meaningless and ultimately not reflective of the rest of the season. But under this plan, the season would go at least through Week 17, and you could argue that, with more emphasis on the 1-seed and more teams vying for the playoffs, fantasy could go to Week 18 under this plan.

But since it looks like we’re heading that way, I thought it would be fun to look back at how the playoff brackets might have changed over the last five years with an extra team in each conference. (Yes, obviously things might have shaken out differently if teams played the season knowing there was an extra spot. This is just for fun.)

2019

Extra Wild Card Round games:
Pittsburgh (8-8) vs. Kansas City (12-4)
LA Rams (9-7) vs. Green Bay (13-3)

It’s hard to imagine the Mason Rudolph/Devlin Hodges Steelers putting up any real kind of fight at all against the Chiefs. Maybe the extra game hurts the Chiefs later in the playoffs and increases the chances of the Texans or Titans taking them out, but ultimately it’s tough to see the AFC playing out much differently.

In the NFC? Sure, it would feel anticlimactic to let the disappointing Rams into the playoffs, but it wouldn’t be hard at all to imagine that team beating an ultimately underwhelming Packers squad. Still, nobody was beating the 49ers if the Saints didn’t get to them.

2018

Extra Wild Card Round games:
Pittsburgh (9-6-1) vs. New England (11-5)
Minnesota (8-7-1) vs. LA Rams (13-3)

Both teams that squared off in that year’s Super Bowl would have had an extra game. And both of those teams barely squeaked past their Conference Championship opponents (Patriots 37-31 over the Chiefs in overtime; Rams 26-23 over the Saints also in overtime). Tire them out even a little more (assuming they even get past the extra opponents), and maybe we’d have had a Chiefs-Saints Super Bowl.

2017

Extra Wild Card Round games:
Baltimore (9-7) vs. Pittsburgh (13-3)
Detroit (9-7) vs. Minnesota (13-3)

Maybe the playoffs themselves wouldn’t have gone that different (the Vikings were blown out by the Eagles after the Minneapolis Miracle; the Steelers lost to the Fighting Bortleses), but at least a Ravens-Steelers playoff game would be exciting. Also the Lions were there.

2016

Extra Wild Card Round games:
Tennessee (9-7) vs. Kansas City (12-4)
Tampa Bay (9-7) vs. Atlanta (11-5)

A Titans team that has literally never been exciting before Ryan Tannehill arrived (that’s a weird sentence to write) vs. a Chiefs team that lost 18-16 in its only playoff game. Okay, so the additional AFC game wouldn’t have been very exciting. In the NFC, a Falcons team that nearly won the Super Bowl would have played a Buccaneers team that did beat it once in the regular season.

2015

Extra Wild Card Round games:
NY Jets (10-6) vs. New England (12-4)
Atlanta (8-8) vs. Arizona (13-3)

Color me surprised that the 2015 Falcons would have been the only .500 team added to any playoff fields in the last five years under this arrangement. Arizona got demolished by a nearly unbeatable-in-the-NFC Carolina team that year, so who knows if adding Atlanta would have changed anything. And while the Patriots probably still would have beaten the Jets, it would have been fun as hell to see the Ryan Fitzpatrick-Brandon Marshall-Eric Decker Jets make an appearance.