Wild ideas

Adding playoff teams would cheapen NFL postseason

Next week the 32 NFL teams will get together in Phoenix to try to make the game better. On Wednesday of this week a conference call featuring Tampa Bay GM Rich McKay, the chairman of the Competition Committee, enlightened us as to what will be the most pressing issues discussed. Naturally, I had my own opinions on those matters.

There's a proposal afoot to add two wild-card teams to the playoffs. This would bring the number of postseason entrants to 14 (of 32). Too many, I say.

From 1990, when the league went to 12 postseason clubs, through 1994, the percentage was 42.9 (12 out of 28 total teams, get it?). In 1995 the league expanded to 30 teams, then to 31 with the addition of Cleveland, then 32 when Houston came in last year. Postseason entrants remained at 12. Increasing the number to 14 would bring the percentage up to 43.75, the highest in history. These are rather quibbling figures we're talking about, but still, the highest ever is the highest ever.

So, do we want pro football's playoff formula to resemble those of the NBA or the NHL? OK, everyone who doesn't want to be in the playoff raise your hands. I think it's a fine thing that the NFL keeps the riffraff out, although even with its current percentage, a rather spare 37.5 (12 out of 32 teams), there are still some slobs at the bottom level of the postseason competition. So why bring in two more of them?

Well, New England was one of the teams that proposed the increase, and the Patriots would have made it under the seven-team-per-conference formula. And I'm sure the TV people wouldn't mind having two more postseason games. Which would mean that on wild-card weekend you'd have an orgy of football, three games on Sunday, three on Saturday. Personally, I wouldn't mind it -- I could watch football round the clock -- but are we possibly talking about some overkill here and cheapening the whole idea of playoff football?

You watch the early afternoon game Saturday, then the one in the late afternoon, check in at the table for a quickie dinner, and you're back at the tube around 8:30 or so. Then on Sunday you do the whole thing again. An ideal situation? I don't know ... it's kind of set up that way during the regular season, but not on back-to-back days.

Here's another thing: The 14-game formula would award only one team in each conference a bye. That would eliminate some of the urgency involving games at the end of the regular season. A lot of teams seem to take a pass, anyway, once they've clinched a playoff spot and know they won't be one of the two teams in the conference getting a bye. So to knock the number down to one just makes it a more cut-and-dried issue.

Proposal No. 2 concerns overtime. Out of the many ideas on how to change the sudden-death setup, only one will be presented -- the two-possession idea. Team A gets the ball, then team B gets it, no matter what A does. If the score is still tied after the two possessions, then the action moves to straight sudden death.

The pluses: 1) Fairness. Forty percent of the teams that had the first possession in OT last year won the game on their first drive.

2) More strategy involved. If you're in field goal range on that initial possession, you might want to go for the first down and the TD, making it harder for the other team to match.

The minuses: 1) Why mess with something that seems to be working pretty well?

2) Longer games. Instead of closing a contest out with the first score, there would be the chance of a matching score and additional, time-consuming action. This might not mean much to the ordinary viewer, but to your faithful narrator, with his charts and dread of overlapping games, it's big.

There are some intriguing questions you could ask. Under the two-possession rule, what would you do if you won the coin toss -- kick or receive? Receive, says McKay. Then you get two possessions to the other team's one, assuming the opponent doesn't outscore you on its first series. Kick off, says Indy coach Tony Dungy. Then you know what your task is on the first possession, and you have fourth down to mess with if you need it.

My feeling? I kind of like OT the way it is, even though it's a bit unfair. What's wrong with making a team play defense right away? Defense is still part of football, isn't it? And a tough defensive stand on the enemy's first possession means that you'll get good field position after the punt.

There will be some replay matters to be tweaked next week, but no one will ever move on my suggestion to include judgment calls, such as interference, in the list of things that can be reviewed. It would mean a ref overruling a fellow official's judgment, and that won't happen.

One officiating matter that will be changed, though, and this didn't come up in the conference call -- I heard it privately -- is the dopey practice of assigning all-star officials from different crews to the playoffs. From now on it will be best all-star teams of officials, not individuals. Hooray, was my first reaction. Finally, something I've been screaming about for 25 years or so will come to pass, but the NFL being the NFL, they had to put a snapper on it.

First- and second-year officials will not be allowed to work in the playoffs. Which is like saying that first- and second-year players can't appear in the Pro Bowl. It's still the old-boy mentality, regarding officiating. The No. 1 concern is to make sure the veteran officials are adequately rewarded, not to get the best people working the games.

Well, that's about it for a while. In a few days we shove off for Phoenix, the ancestral home of the Flaming Redhead; home of my old buddy, Ben the Bettor, who regularly kills those big-money NFL pools and has promised to show me the secret; land of the flattest, dullest landscape this side of Dallas. I'll keep you posted.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and CNNSI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on SI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here.

 

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