Doyel: Most Colts injury update ever: Darius Leonard's ankle masked severity of back

[ChaosTheory]

Originally Posted by Colts And Orioles

I believe that they ought to make a clause in regard to division winners getting to play on their homefield with a significantly worse record than their opponent. They should make it so that you have to be at least within 2 full games of the team that you are playing in order to maintain the homefield advantage ...... so a team that won their division with a record of 10-7 would still be able to host a playoff game against a Wildcard team that had a record of 12-5. BUT, if a team won their division with a record of 9-8 (or 9-7-1) was playing a Wildcard team that finished with a record of 12-5, then the Wildcard team would then host the playoff game.

I agree with the sentiment, but I'd rather keep the arbitrarity out of it. It gets messy. Like how overtime now gives both team a possession unless you score a TD. And people say, "Well, why don't they both get a possession regardless?" And next it'll be, "Well, why don't they both get two possessions?" and so on.

Originally Posted by IndyNorm

I like your idea, but I'd like to see the league take it a step further and seed the playoffs by record w/ division winner being the 1st tie breaker (or better yet 2nd tie breaker after head to head).

Normally I'd say to leave the qualification seeding as they've always been (4 division champs + 3 WC)... and once you've got your field, simply seed them according to record. Keeps the division really meaningful. Division winner could also be part of the tie-breaker.

But yours is an interesting take. It doesn't make being a division winner meaningless due to tie-breakers... But I suppose the issue would be that theoretically a division winner could miss the playoffs outright. The '08 Chargers and the '10 Seahawks we mentioned both would've missed the playoffs even with under the current 7-team field. And maybe that's what they deserved.

It becomes a matter of meritocracy vs. marketing, and marketing would never omit an entire division's audience from the playoffs.