Remove teams with losing records

No legitimate Super Bowl champion should have a losing record in the regular season. The Panthers, crowned NFC South champions at 8-9, are not an outlier. Since 2010, five teams with losing records have made the postseason. The 2022 Bucs were the first team to make the dance with a losing record since the league instituted a 17-game schedule. This season, the NFC South has done it again.

This isn’t an annual problem, but it is an inherent design flaw.

Division champs getting an automatic playoff berth – and a home game – is a hot topic every season. The usual defence is tradition. Divisions matter. Rivalries matter. Storylines matter. And they do – up to a point. Preserving divisions and guaranteeing a playoff berth is essential; there is no need for a record-only free-for-all here. The end-of-season Steelers–Ravens game was electric precisely because of what was at stake: a division title, a playoff spot, a good seed and the futures of the league’s two longest-tenured coaches. But that electricity should not grant teams immunity. You can win your division and still not deserve to play in January. Those ideas do not need to be mutually exclusive.

If you win your division with a losing record, you get the hats, the banner and the bonuses. What you should not get is a playoff game. January should belong to teams that proved, at the very least, they could win more often than they lost. That’s not radical. It can be done while still maintaining that division winners keep homefield if they finish above .500.

The Panthers will be a tough out in the wildcard round. They have the ingredients to replicate the 2011 “Beast Quake” game, when the Seahawks and Marshawn Lynch shocked the Saints despite a regular-season 7-9 record. They’ve taken some big scalps this season and have already beaten the Rams. But rewarding them with a home spot against one of the conference’s best after posting a losing record is wrong. If it was switched up this season, Minnesota would be in the playoff field over Carolina, with the home site awarded to the team with the better record (the Rams). That seems a fair swap.

Expand the field – but do it cleanly

There was a time when the NFL’s playoff structure felt close to perfect. Twelve teams. Two byes per conference. Excellence was rewarded, mediocrity filtered out, and the bracket made intuitive sense.

Then the format expanded to 14 teams, largely to sell another television package and the whole thing began to look misshapen. Seven teams per conference with a single bye is awkward. One team rests, six do not. The reward for being elite is marginal. The punishment for sneaking in is almost nonexistent.

There are some upsides. The regular season has more meaningful games down the stretch thanks to extra teams being in the hunt. The two added games have real stakes. What’s not to love? A Week 18 slate where a batch of teams rest their starters is worth it, given the weekend ahead. But the overall structure is ungainly. It is designed to flog TV inventory, not find a champion.

A return to 12 teams isn’t happening. The NFL does not contract; it expands. If that is the direction of travel, then it should at least be done cleanly. Sixteen teams. Eight per conference. Give byes to the top-two seeds, or forgo byes altogether. Preserving homefield advantage for division champions (with a winning record) is a must in the first round. From there, the field should be re-seeded to give whoever had the best regular-season record home advantage.

Expansion will eventually arrive – an 18th game, perhaps two new teams. When that time comes, adding an extra playoff spot per conference will be inevitable. The league can – and should – get there early.

Bring jeopardy back to kicking

It has been a historic season for kickers. Records are falling for distance and accuracy. Pair that with the new kickoff rules and the new kicking ball, and the playing field has been tilted in dramatic ways.

The new rules were introduced to bring a spark back to special teams while reducing the volume of high-end collisions. That has worked. The knock-on consequences, however, have ever so slightly warped the game. The touchback is being placed at the 35-yard line while quality kickers comfortably nail kicks from 60 yards. Add the tweaks to special teams rules (such as touching the center) and the kickers are set up in field-goal range more often with more freedom to drill long shots. Case in point: Dallas’ Brandon Aubrey has kicked more 60-yard field goals in his three-year career than every NFL kicker in the 20th century.

That’s great for Jacksonville, who will have a significant advantage this postseason because of Cam Little’s leg. Little has boomed field goals from 70 yards (preseason), 68 and 67 this season. Kickers bring the drama, but playoff games should be decided by the players who scrap away for 70-something plays.

There are two potential changes. One is to add a “kicking zone,” similar to the “landing zone” during kickoffs. With a kicking zone, there would be a point of demarcation – call it the opponent’s 40-yard line – at which a team can attempt a field goal. Before that, an offense has to choose whether to punt the ball away or go for it on fourth down. It would manufacture fourth-down drama and force coaches into uncomfortable decisions.

A set zone has its faults. It would feel artificial and clunky. It would also remove some of the strategy of the game. And you just know there will be a playoff game decided by a team falling one yard short of the kicking zone, which would inevitably lead to it being scrapped.

The quieter solution is probably the better one: narrow the uprights.

Kicking is a discrete skill. And we’re living in the glory years, when even college kickers are converting 55-yard efforts. But the environment now allows those players to take on an outsized role. Reducing the width of the uprights would restore risk and suspense without changing the essence of the game. Long field goals would still be attempted, but they would again feel like choices rather than defaults. Tension would return. So would consequences.

Right now, the talent of the NFL’s kickers has minimized risk. And risky football is fun. Risky football in the playoffs is what fuels group chats and debate shows. Addressing the kicking boom would add even more jeopardy.