Of all the major sports, the NFL had their playoff system down to a science. With six teams from each conference making the cut, there were three weekends of playoff football leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. But over the past two seasons, the system has been tweaked.
After adding a seventh playoff team last season, the NFL took things a step further by adding a Monday night game to Wild Card Weekend. The decision is as green as the slime poured on Sean Payton last January but has little support from the players.
Minnesota Vikings cornerback Patrick Peterson shared his thoughts on his All Things Covered podcast, saying that the Monday night game creates an unfair advantage for the teams that play in it.
“That’s horrible, man,” Peterson said. “I understand you want to get more games on TV, but we’ve also got to level the playing field here. That just doesn’t make any sense at all because what if we play a team [the following week of the playoffs] that played on Saturday?”
Peterson’s take has merit. The NFL isn’t like the NBA or NHL playoffs, where teams can wrap things up a week early and get some extra rest. Football games can’t be played on a nightly basis, and teams need a full week to prepare for their next opponent. Unless you want to see a situation like when Bishop Sycamore got blasted by IMG Academy, playing games close together doesn’t work.
But it’s not like the playoff system doesn’t have teams operating on short weeks. Last year, the Buffalo Bills played the Indianapolis Colts on Wild Card Saturday while the Baltimore Ravens defeated the Tennessee Titans on Sunday. The Bills beat the Ravens the following weekend with the day advantage and advanced to the NFC Championship Game.
This has also happened in previous years, where divisional opponents don’t know their opponent until the highest or lowest seed is revealed.
The NFL could also be trying to give some of the advantage back to the second-seeded team in each conference. For years, the top two teams received opening-round byes. However, that was eliminated with the addition of a seventh team. Having a No. 2 seed play on Saturday or Sunday creates a slightly more significant advantage for their next matchup.
And although it was met with resistance, the seventh team created 10 hours of non-stop football on Saturday and Sunday. We may not have needed to see Mitchell Tubisky flounder in front of slime cannons, but you’re kidding yourself if you didn’t enjoy parking yourself on the couch and watching football for an entire weekend.
That’s what makes the Monday night game disappointing. Last year’s Super Wild Card weekend created an atmosphere that fans would have looked forward to this year. Instead, the NFL draws everything out an extra day, pads its bank account, and leaves the fans (and its players) in the dust.
