NFL playoffs 1st round is wrong

Balzer makes case for records determining site

Perhaps it’s fitting in the wake of the tragic wildfires that have engulfed southern California that the final playoff game of wild-card weekend has been moved from the home of the Los Angeles Rams to the home of the division-rival Arizona Cardinals.

It would have been poetic justice had the game been moved to the home of the Rams’ opponent, the Minnesota Vikings, which won four more games than the Rams during the regular season.

It’s a significant shortcoming in the NFL postseason system that automatically awards division winners with a home game rather than seeding the postseason according to the best records.

The NFC West with the Rams, the NFC South with the Bucs and the AFC South with the Texans were won by teams with only 10 victories and they were to be at home despite playing wild-card teams with better records.

This has been the glaring result since realignment in 2002 when four divisions were created leading to there being only six division matchups for each team. That has devalued division games and placed more emphasis on the remaining games on each team’s schedule, which now numbers 11.

Prior to this season, since 2002, there had been 29 first-round games where a wild-card team with a better record was forced to go on the road to play a division winner. Of those 29 games, the home team has won 15, including last season when the 9-8 Bucs defeated the 11-6 Eagles and the 10-7 Texans beat the 11-6 Browns.

There have been only four seasons (2004, 2006, 2017 and 2021) where there wasn’t one of those matchups and there was one (2010) where there were three just like this year.

The 10-7 Bucs will host the 12-5 Commanders, the 10-7 Rams would have been at home against the 14-3 Vikings and the 11-6 Chargers will travel to play the 10-7 Texans.

The Vikings are the first team with more than 12 wins having to travel for their first game and that would have been the case for the Lions had they lost last Sunday night.

Tampa Bay is the No. 3 seed in the NFC and this is the first time since 2017 that a division winner (the Jaguars) with only 10 wins was the three seed.

In the NFC, there is also a third wild-card team (Green Bay at 11-6) with a better record than those two division winners. By record, the Rams and Bucs should have been the sixth and seventh seeds.

Meanwhile, the Rams and Vikings game with its four-win differential will be the sixth time that has happened since 2002 and the road team has lost three times:

2008: The 8-8 Chargers beat the 12-4 Colts, 23-17.

2010: The 7-9 Seahawks, in the famous Marshawn Lynch “Beast Mode” game, beat the Saints, 41-36.

2010: The 8-8 Broncos, with Tim Tebow at quarterback, defeated the 12-4 Steelers in overtime, 29-23.

In the other two games:

2020: The 11-5 Bucs beat 7-9 Washington, 31-23, but that was the COVID-19 season with limited fans in attendance.

2022: The 12-5 Cowboys beat the 8-9 Bucs, 31-14.

There has also been two games where the win differential was 3.5 and those games split with one involving the Cardinals:

2013: The 12-4 49ers beat the 8-7-1 Packers, 23-20.

2014: The 7-8-1 Panthers defeated the 11-5 Cardinals, 27-16.

There has been one game with a three-win differential:

2016: The 9-7 Texans beat the 12-4 Raiders, 27-14.

If we eliminate the 2020 outlier, of the seven other games with at least a three-victory differential, the home team with a worse record has won five.

Simply stated, the NFL has this wrong, but they refuse to change it because the owners insist it’s a reward for winning the division. No, the reward is simply being in the playoffs. That should be enough, especially considering that divisions have been won by teams with an 8-8 record or worse five times since realignment and yet they have been “rewarded” with a home game.

Prior to 2002, in the 23 seasons (1978-2001) played with a 16-game schedule, only once was a division won by a team with an 8-8 record and that was the Browns in 1985 competing in a four-team division.

It was predictable this would happen after realignment reduced the division matchups and when that possibility was suggested at the time, league officials claimed they would watch and see what happened.

Well, we knew quickly and yet it has continued for 23 seasons. There has never been a real push to get it right, but it’s strange there hasn’t been.

After all, for every owner happy to be a division winner playing at home with an inferior record, there is one on flip side of that coin having to live with going on the road.

(A version of this story appeared on cardswire.usatoday.com before the league announced the site of the Monday night game was moved to Glendale)