The NFL owners met this past week to discuss possible rule changes.  One of the proposals was to re-seed the playoffs.  The idea was to seed the teams based on their record, and not whether or not they won their respective division.  This rule would reward the good teams that finished with an outstanding record, but didn’t win their highly competitive division.  It would also give teams a reason to play in the final week of the season.

I think that rule is worth discussing, but isn’t necessarily the answer.   If a division leader that already clinched their division was 9-6 going into the final week, and a wild card team was 11-4, neither team would have anything to play for in this scenario as the wild card team would have already earned the better seed.

The league really wants to implement a rule that will give the teams something to play for in the final week.  In my opinion, if they would reward the teams that win on the last week of the year with a compensatory draft pick the next season, I believe that would give them a reason to want to win that game.  Perhaps, that would be enough to entice coaches to play their key players, which in turn rewards the fans for paying the price of admission to see a quality game.

Does anyone else have any ideas that might work besides re-seeding the playoffs and offering money rewards for merely trying to win a scheduled game?

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