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In March the owners will be voting to expand the playoffs from 12 teams to 14 as well as changing playoff seedings. The proposed seedings would be: 1 seed gets a bye, 2 and 3 seeds are division winners with the next highest record/tiebreakers, and the fourth division winner will be guaranteed a playoff spot but seeds 4-7 will be based on record/tiebreakers. So for example, this year the NFC South winner would be the 7th seed and have to play the #2 seed on the road in Wild Card weekend.
The thinking seems to be that it's extremely rare for a wild card team to have a better record than the 3 seed, but the 5 seed has had a better record than the 4 seed pretty frequently. And of course years like 2010 and this year where both wild cards are better than the 4 seed.
I dunno. I'm a believer that if you win your division, you should not only make the playoffs but get a home playoff game. If the wild card team can't go on the road and beat an inferior opponent, they don't deserve to advance. Although it's fun to joke about it's never really bothered me that a bad division can produce a bad playoff team. In 2010 my 10-6 Giants stayed home while the 7-9 Seahawks got in. That's just the breaks.
Would be happy with 14 playoff teams though. It's still less than half the league, makes the 1 seed that much more important, and would make that first weekend of the playoffs extra fun.
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