I feel very strongly that the division winner should get a home game. Otherwise, why have divisions at all? If they want to reseed after the first week, I'd be all for that.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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I think the idea would be, winning your Division still locks you into a playoff spot. Home games and seeding just have no bearing on your division.
I don't like that a team can have the second best record in the entire NFL, but if the best record is in their division they get a road game against a mediocre division winner as a reward (you can easily imagine a 13-4 division runner up getting a road game against an 8-9 division winner.
What you miss with this analysis, though, is that the relative schedules within a division are rather fairly balanced, while it is less balanced between divisions. Within a division, there are only 3 games that are not against common opponents. The other 14 games they are either playing each other, or another entire division.
Since the matchups between divisions rotate, if there is one division that is a doormat, they will get trounced by their outside competition. So the divisions with that matchup will have two or three "gimme" games that the others don't have. Likewise, that low-talent division might have its championship decided by their head-to-head games, because every team's record outside the division would be poor.
Guaranteeing that each division winner will host at least one game is also good for geographic diversity in the playoffs. Playoff hosts in that first week are guaranteed to be diverse, and it will be easy to schedule early and late games accordingly.
I'm torn on this. As a lions fan, I get it. But I do like that divisions matter. It gives an added level of incentive to do everything possible to win your division.
It does seem wrong that two teams can play a game that puts the winner as 1 and the loser as 5
Since there are 32 teams and that is a power of 2 it would be more efficient to skip the regular season.