Seven Seeds

[Thelonebillsfan]

37 minutes ago, Ray Reed said:

What stops a team that’s locked into a 2/3/4 seed, but can’t attain the 1 seed, from resting the last week-2 weeks of the season? 

Knowing they won’t get a bye (especially the 2 seed) but will still get a first round game at home will cause a lot more teams to rest the final week/s IMO.

Especially projected 2 seeds who previously would have gotten that bye week. They’ll almost assuredly be resting week 17 now.

Teams will 100% rest players for 2 weeks now, especially with the additional game added. There's no incentive to play them to chase a bye, if you're out of it you're out of it, rest your players and you get the same home game you'd have gotten regardless.

Also not talked about much is that this means there's just a glut of games on the WC weekend, you'll get games on TruTV and **** like the other leagues.

[wackywabbit]

1 hour ago, theJ said:

That doesn't eliminate the moments. It just shifts them from the 6th to the 7th seeds. 

It also will eliminate #1&2 seeds from resting players in week 17, which is also good. 

I don't buy the argument. 

Not really. How many 8th seeds do you feel like actually mattered? The dropoff gets steeper and steeper as you add an extra team. Just taking last year as an example, we spent 17 weeks of regular season to raise the bar for playoff team to being better than the Rams and Pittsburgh. With 14 playoff teams, the bar for playoffs was just Bears and Broncos, who have had no business sniffing the playoff race IMO. Those teams don't feel like they should be teams that just missed the playoffs.

The 1 seed now means a little more. But the difference between the 2 and 7 seed is now just homefield advantage. That's too wide a range for a marginal benefit. If one team pulls ahead in the conference, then the end of the regular season has very little drama. I would honestly even prefer keeping the two bye teams, and adding a true wild card round before the existing brackets where 4 wild card teams play. A wild card has to win 5 playoff games to get a title without winning their division. Regular season standings matter a lot more in that scenario. 

Edited April 1, 2020 by wackywabbit

[theJ]

1 hour ago, wackywabbit said:

Not really. How many 8th seeds do you feel like actually mattered? The dropoff gets steeper and steeper as you add an extra team. Just taking last year as an example, we spent 17 weeks of regular season to raise the bar for playoff team to being better than the Rams and Pittsburgh. With 14 playoff teams, the bar for playoffs was just Bears and Broncos, who have had no business sniffing the playoff race IMO. Those teams don't feel like they should be teams that just missed the playoffs.

The 1 seed now means a little more. But the difference between the 2 and 7 seed is now just homefield advantage. That's too wide a range for a marginal benefit. If one team pulls ahead in the conference, then the end of the regular season has very little drama. I would honestly even prefer keeping the two bye teams, and adding a true wild card round before the existing brackets where 4 wild card teams play. A wild card has to win 5 playoff games to get a title without winning their division. Regular season standings matter a lot more in that scenario. 

So because the teams aren't as good, means we won't get moments of drama? Why?

I don't get the argument.  

I get that the 7th seed won't be as good. But they'll still be winning ball clubs. Maybe what we should do is actually reverse this and eliminate playoff teams then?! Because then we'll have better teams! Those 6 seeds rarely make the SB anyway. 

^ is why I don't like this argument. 

[theJ]

2 hours ago, Ray Reed said:

What stops a team that’s locked into a 2/3/4 seed, but can’t attain the 1 seed, from resting the last week-2 weeks of the season? 

Knowing they won’t get a bye (especially the 2 seed) but will still get a first round game at home will cause a lot more teams to rest the final week/s IMO.

Especially projected 2 seeds who previously would have gotten that bye week. They’ll almost assuredly be resting week 17 now.

Rubbish. Same thing that current stops teams from resting when they're locked into 3/4. Because they want home field advantage as long as they can get it. It can affect it not only in round 1, but also round 2. That's why they won't rest. 

[Nabbs4u]

On 3/31/2020 at 11:11 PM, Shady Slim said:

my question is, how long do we think it'll be before a seven seed makes some noise in the playoffs?

 

2020. When some Team upsets Aaron Rodgers Packers because he was denied a Bye as a 2 seed!

Edited April 2, 2020 by Nabbs4u

[y*so*blu]

On 3/31/2020 at 10:11 PM, Shady Slim said:

so now a big change the owners were pushing for seven seeds is properly approved, i'm sure that most of you have read articles of "what would the playoffs look like for the past decade with seven seeds", and most of the time it's a decidedly mediocre team getting the nod, except for that one time with the bears

my question is, how long do we think it'll be before a seven seed makes some noise in the playoffs? if they do, and knock off a two seed, how much of the "this system is stupid bring back the old system" discourse would come of it? is this a change that we think is permanent, or will it get shown to be silly and be repealed? what do we think

I already think it's silly and should be repealed, so that part's easy.

A #7 team might make noise occasionally (see this), but probably not enough to make the change look like anything better than it is: an excuse to add more playoff teams to a sport that doesn't need them, because it's already one of the most exciting and profitable in the world.

Edited April 5, 2020 by y*so*blu