It was a moderate surprise on Tuesday when word came down that the league had tabled — instead of rejected — Detroit’s proposal to change the postseason seeding format.
The exact wording of the Lions’ proposal was, “to amend the current playoff seeding format to allow Wild Card teams to be seeded higher than Division Champions if the Wild Card team has a better regular season record.”
Chairman of the Competition Committee Rich McKay acknowledged on Tuesday that tabling the measure indicates there is “some” support for making a change. But McKay also noted he’s been through this kind of discussion multiple times before and there wasn’t much different in 2025.
“And it always gets back to, the traditionalist says, ‘I want to win the division. I want the division to mean something,’” McKay said on Tuesday. “Well ‘something’ could be that you qualify for the playoffs. That’s something. But people say, ‘No, I want to host a playoff game.’ Then the other idea is, are you diminishing division championships — which we do not want — because I think it’s served us very well to use divisions.
“Then the discussion was, OK, what if you said, win the division get a home game … unless your record is .500 or below? Then you don’t. There was some talk about that. So, I think people want to keep looking at it. It doesn’t mean it will come back up and get passed in May. It very well may be a different discussion if the season is extended. But it was a long discussion, it was a good discussion.”
Of the coaches who went on the record this week about the proposal, Mike Tomlin, Sean Payton, and Sean McVay were among those who did not want to see the seeding format change — with all three citing winning the division as meaningful. Washington’s Dan Quinn, who was Seattle’s assistant head coach and defensive line coach in 2010, also on Tuesday that he’s not in favor of that change after being involved with Marshawn Lynch’s “Beastquake” run that helped the 7-9 Seahawks beat the 11-5 Saints.
“I would be really bummed,” Quinn said.
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