For as long as anyone can remember, the NFL playoffs have been set up to give division winners one of the top seeds in their conference, regardless of how underwhelming their records are.
Last season, it resulted in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams getting the third and fourth seeds, respectively, in the NFC despite having a 10-7 record, which was significantly worse than the record the Minnesota Vikings, who won 14 games, had.
There is now a proposal, which was issued by the defending NFC North champion Detroit Lions, to seed playoff teams by record and not take into consideration whether they won their division.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called the proposal “healthy,” and the league is reportedly considering it, per Jonathan Jones.
Roger Goodell called Detroit’s tabled proposal to change playoff seeding as “healthy.” NFL has interest in looking more closely at playoff seeding changes that wouldn’t guarantee a division winner a home playoff game.
— Jonathan Jones (@jjones9) April 1, 2025
There are a couple of divisions in the NFL that are relatively weak, which leads to the current playoff format arguably resulting in unbalanced seeding come playoff time.
In addition, home-field advantage is determined by seeding position and not regular-season record throughout the playoffs, which gives more credibility to the Lions’ proposal.
The NBA used to use the same method to determine playoff seeding, and it received some criticism about that method, until it started arranging the top four seeds in each conference based on win-loss records and not which teams won their division.
The last real change the NFL made to its playoff format came in 2020, when, after many years of proposals, it added a third wild-card team to each conference; before that, its playoff format had remained unchanged since 1990 when it expanded its playoff field to 12 teams.
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