The NFL playoffs just got bigger. The league officially expanded the postseason from 12 to 14 teams Tuesday.
League owners voted to expand the playoff field making official a move that had been expected since the approval of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The vote took place as a conference call after the league meeting in Palm Beach, Fl, was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In the new format, each conference will have an additional wild-card berth. Only the top seed from each conference will receive a bye, leaving the remaining six teams per side to face off in the wild-card round.
- There will be a total of three wild-card teams per conference.
- The No. 2 seed in each conference will host the No. 7 seed in the wild-card round.
- Wild-card weekend will feature back-to-back tripleheaders on Jan. 9 and Jan. 10. CBS will broadcast one of the new games, scheduled for a 4:40 p.m. ET kickoff on Jan. 10, and it will be streamed on CBS All Access. That game will also be aired on Nickelodeon in a production geared toward a younger audience. The other game will be shown on NBC, its streaming service Peacock and Spanish-language Telemundo on Jan. 10 at approximately 8:15 p.m. ET.
Approximate kickoff times for the NFL wildcard games on Saturday and Sunday: 1:05p, 4:40p and 8:15p
— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) March 31, 2020
NFL.com added this piece of information:
Per league data, since 1990, when the playoffs expanded from 10 to 12 teams, 44 of the 60 teams that would have claimed the seventh seeds had winning records, including 10 different 10-win teams. Only the 1990 Dallas Cowboys would have made the playoffs with a losing record over that span in a 14-team format.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1245058922987356161
Had the rule been in place for the past season, the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers would have made it into the postseason field.