NFL Considering Adding Eighth Playoff Team Amid Bills-Bengals Fallout?

3:52pm: No NFL-NFLPA discussions have taken place regarding an eighth playoff team per conference this year, union executive director DeMaurice Smith said (via the Washington Post’s Mark Maske, on Twitter).

2:50pm: The NFL is giving more consideration to a neutral-site AFC title game, and Albert Breer of SI.com notes Indianapolis has surfaced in the discussions (Twitter link). The league has informed relevant teams of the Lucas Oil Stadium concept. The league has not talked with the Colts yet, but CBS4’s Mike Chappell notes (via Twitter) the venue would be available on Jan. 29.

12:47pm: Bills and Bengals players are not behind making up the game, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk writes, and the NFL appears to be discussing off-radar solutions to limit the impact Monday’s postponement would have on the AFC’s playoff bracket.

The league is understandably concerned calling Monday’s game a no-contest would unfairly punish the Bills or Bengals, considering both had a shot at home-field advantage. The prospect of the NFL adding an eighth playoff team for this season is now being discussed, Florio adds. Should the NFL attempt to go forward with this emergency approach, the NFLPA would need to approve it as well.

This would be a rather radical solution, but it would partially prevent the Chiefs — who would be a Las Vegas win away from earning home-field advantage — from both reaping the spoils of both an all-Missouri playoff docket and having an extra week of rest. The frightening Damar Hamlin scene leading to that sounds like something the league is trying to avoid, but the prospect of changing the bracket days ahead of Week 18 is a rather unexpected development.

The Chiefs winning Saturday and improving to 14-3 would give them the No. 1 seed, in the likely event Monday’s game is canceled, based on win percentage. However, an NFL half-measure would be to take the bye away. The Chiefs losing Saturday and the Bills winning Sunday, thus giving Buffalo the top seed, would guard against the AFC East champions having extra rest — effectively, as less than 10 minutes of Monday’s game elapsed — as well. The Bills did not have a bye week, of course, but should the NFL declare Monday’s game a no-contest, they will end their regular season with 16 games played. Ditto the Bengals, who will clinch the AFC North with a no-contest but will see their path toward the No. 1 seed close.

If eight teams are added to the AFC bracket, the NFC playoffs would need to be expanded as well. Major League Baseball changed its playoff bracket amid the COVID-19-truncated 2020 season but did so just before that shortened season began. The NFL has also made late changes to its calendar in recent years, moving the start of the league year back multiple times during CBA talks in 2020 and rescheduling several games during the 2020 and ’21 seasons due to COVID-19 outbreaks. In 1982 — a season altered by a players’ strike that wiped out seven games — the league also agreed to expand its playoff brackets to 16 teams. That is the only time in NFL history 16 teams qualified for the postseason.

An idea floated around proposing the NFC playoffs begin next week, along with a Bills-Bengals makeup event, and the AFC starting a week later — with the conferences synching up ahead of their respective divisional rounds — has not gained traction, Florio adds. However, discussions are continuing regarding the AFC championship game being played at a neutral site. When NFL executive VP Troy Vincent said everything was on the table, it appears he was serious.

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