The National Football League is reportedly ready to add a seventh playoff team to each conference and will do away with one first-round bye slot.
A new report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter has word that the National Football League is ready to add a seventh playoff team to each conference in an effort to apparently increase postseason revenue and add further excitement in the playoff picture.
NFL playoff structure is about to be changed. Under the current CBA proposal, seven teams from each conference will make the playoffs, with only bye per conference, sources tell ESPN. It would go into effect this upcoming season. More coming on https://t.co/rDZaVFhcDQ.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 19, 2020
At this point, the first and second seed in each conference is given a first-round bye as the next four seeds play each other. In this instance, the top seed in each conference would be the only team rewarded with an extra rest week while the rest would have to fight through what is now the Wild Card round.
If the rules were implemented for this past season, the playoff journey for the Kansas City Chiefs would have been wildly different. First, the Chiefs would have not made the first-round bye since the Baltimore Ravens had it locked up. Instead, the Chiefs would have played the Pittsburgh Steelers in the opening round.
In the NFC, the Los Angeles Rams would have made the postseason after all instead of falling out of the playoffs just one year after playing in the Super Bowl.
No changes have officially been made yet, but it’s clear that a new collective bargaining agreement is going to change many things about the future of the NFL, including finances and the postseason hopes of teams who are on the edge of a season’s playoff picture.