The Minnesota Vikings just completed the second-best regular season of their 64-year history with 14 wins. Unfortunately for the Vikings, National Football League rules rewarded the Vikings with a road playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams.
The historic nature of the Vikings’ season has prompted some potential rule changes with the playoffs.
NFL could change playoff seeding
For years, playoff seeding has been decided by two things:
- Division winners and wind card recipients are grouped together
- In each group, their seeding is determined by win percentage
That could end up changing this offseason. CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones reported during the pregame show that the seeding procedures may change.
“Three games this week featuring teams with better records than their opponents of playing on the road, including the one that we have coming up in an hour now (Los Angeles Chargers vs. Houston Texans). The NFL will take another look this off-season at potentially changing the playoff format. Maybe top four teams in win percentage get a home game instead of division winners. Team owners haven’t shown much of an appetite for changing, though.”
This would be interesting for many reasons. In this scenario, the Vikings would be the second seed and host division rival Green Bay on Sunday. Instead, the Vikings will take on the Rams on Monday night.
The one element that could be interesting is if the NFL decides to keep the division winners with their home playoff game in the wild card round and then completely reseed in the divisional round, giving the Vikings a home game then.
This could be a huge change for the league, but it won’t help the Vikings in 2024. However, it will be worth keeping an eye on this offseason.
