At the NFL’s spring meetings today in Atlanta, the league’s owners discussed the concept of playoff expansion, but opted to postpone a more in-depth conversation on the subject until the fall. While that rules out the possibility of a 14-team playoff for the 2014 season, the idea remains very much in play for 2015, and it seems inevitable that it will happen eventually, as Kevin Seifert writes at ESPN.com. Seifert runs through 10 questions related to playoff expansion, examining the league’s motives, players’ and fans’ views, and whether expanding to a 14-team playoff could lead to any other changes.
Let’s round up a few more items from around the NFL….
- Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters, including Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (on Twitter) that he is confident expanded playoffs will go into effect for 2015.
- The future of the NFL draft remains up in the air and Goodell wouldn’t specify a target date for the draft in 2015, writes ESPN.com’s Vaughn McClure. “We’re looking at everything,” Goodell said. “We think that the draft has a great deal more potential to grow in popularity. We don’t believe [the date] affected us in a negative way at all this year.“
- With Dez Bryant, Michael Crabtree, Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, Roddy White, Wes Welker, Torrey Smith, Demaryius Thomas, Reggie Wayne, Jeremy Maclin, and Hakeem Nicks in the final years of their deal, 2015 is shaping up to be an all-time great wide receiver free agent class, tweets Adam Schefter of NFL Network.
- Will Brinson of CBSSports.com takes an in-depth look at whether or not trading a first-round pick to acquire a specific player has benefited NFL teams over the last decade or so. Predictably, Brinson finds that there’s some short-term benefit to making such a deal, but that it doesn’t necessarily pay off in the long run.
Zach Links contributed to this post.