Playoff reseeding likely a no-go; more meeting notes

Reseeding the playoffs may stop teams from resting players on the final weekend, a trend that hurt Jamal Lewis and the Browns in '07. Thomas E. Witte/SI

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PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight from day one of the NFL annual meeting at The Breakers, hard by the Atlantic Ocean ...

• The owners had barely convened Monday morning and I started hearing that the push to reseed the NFL playoff field is probably not going anywhere this year but down to defeat. Like almost any new idea that gets broached in this league, no matter how much sense it makes right off the bat, the NFL is averse to hasty change without first chewing on the issue for a year or two.

Twenty-four of the league's 32 clubs would have to approve the proposal, which would allow wild-card teams to play host to first-round playoff games if they finish with a better record than either of the two division winners who do not get a first-round bye.

I talked to two members of the NFL's competition committee Monday, and it seems as if that body already knows it doesn't have enough votes to get anything approved this year. So it'll likely get voted this week, fall short, and then be resubmitted by the committee next year at this time.

"You've got to move the idea along, and that's always the process with something like this,'' one committee member said. "It could be a [multi-year] debate. That could be the way it goes. I just don't know if we have the votes yet. This year might be just kind of educational, getting people to think about the issues.''

At the NFL scouting combine in late February, the move to reseed the playoffs seemed to have strong early momentum. I talked to at least two of the competition committee members there, and they thought the eight-man committee might be behind the idea unanimously. But when the committee hashed out the proposal earlier this month in its working session in Naples, Fla., the vote was only 5-3 in favor of reseeding, and that's usually not enough of a consensus to get a first-time measure adopted.

"It certainly tells you that there's not an overwhelming majority for it,'' said Colts general manager Bill Polian, a longtime member of the competition committee, of the 5-3 committee vote. "If we're not unanimous or 7-1, it's usually a pretty good indication that it doesn't have enough support from ownership.

"We're going to take the temperature and see where we are. I really believe this is an owner's issue more than a football guy's issue. I happen to be in favor of reseeding, but I see good issues on both sides of it.''

Just a guess, but I'd say a 5-3 committee vote might roughly translate into a 20-12 result before the full ownership, and that's not going to get it done. The re-seeding proposal has the support of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who wants to give teams as much motivation as possible to play out their entire 16-game regular season schedule without resting a significant number of starters in the final weeks.

Last year, the 10-6 Browns missed the AFC playoffs on a tiebreaker when 10-6 Tennessee went on the road and beat a Colts team that was resting most of its key starters, having already wrapped up its playoff seeding.

"We haven't really talked about it yet, but personally I think we would be for it,'' Browns general manager Phil Savage said. "I think it's important for everybody to play all 16 games. And I think that would have been my feeling even before our experience last year. But somebody said there are some teams against it though, so we'll see.''

The word is that there's just too much push-back within the league in terms of teams wanting a division title to guarantee you at least one playoff home game, as it traditionally has. Some owners are willing to fight for that system on the premise that the gate from the one extra home game in the playoffs is a huge infusion of money for the offseason, and it jumpstarts your season-ticket campaign for the following year.

"I think it has a chance, but the respect for the division championship might override it,'' Colts owner Jim Irsay said. "It has some pros and cons to it. It fixes some things, but there are inconsistencies that can happen as a result of it, too. Some teams want to honor the divisional championships, and I'm sure they'll be some historical aspects to that.

"It doesn't take a lot of votes to get something to not happen. It has a chance to pass, but it may not because of the sub-plots involved, that you possibly fix some things but leave some other things exposed.''

• One new measure that is expected to pass easily is the out-fitting of communication devices in the helmets of two defensive players on each team (only one of them can be on the field at any one time.) The proposal fell two votes short last year, which only proves the point we were making about the playoff reseeding.

"It makes for a more efficient game,'' Polian said. "My sense is most people feel like it's a good thing.''

Polian also said he doesn't know if the Patriots' Spygate drama played a role in the defensive player radio helmet proposal gaining so much support. But we do. Spygate definitely moved people within the league toward the proposal, as a way to combat the temptation to videotape an opponent's defensive signals.

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