Jerry Jones Favors Expanded Playoffs

[BigBen07 285]

Not sure if anyone heard about this so I put it up.

 

 

Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones, a postseason spectator for the fourth consecutive year, is in favor of expanding the NFL playoffs.

 

"From the standpoint of looking at how exciting it is for a city or a community to be involved in the playoffs and the fact that you can have a team that might have literally operated at .500 or in that area ... you can have that team win the Super Bowl," Jones said Friday on 105.3 The Fan. "That makes a big case for adding a couple of more cities or communities that have NFL teams to the playoffs.

 

"It just creates that much more excitement and that much more interest for people in those communities. So I fall on the side of the ledger that would increase the playoffs."

 

Jones was answering a hypothetical question about adding two teams to the playoffs in each conference.

Only one team has won the Super Bowl with a single-digit regular-season win total in a non-strike-shortened season. That was the 2011 New York Giants, who went 9-7 and punched their ticket to the playoffs in Week 17 by defeating the Cowboys with the NFC East title at stake.

 

The Cowboys have finished 8-8 and lost a Week 17 game that determined the division champion in each of the last three seasons.

 

Dallas would not have qualified for the playoffs the last four seasons even if they were expanded to include an additional two teams per conference.

 

Link has a video: http://espn.go.com/dallas/nfl/story/_/id/10237964/jerry-jones-dallas-cowboys-favor-expanding-nfl-playoffs

 

Note: Thread title needs a correction, as I accidentally left out the 's' in Jones.

Edited January 4, 2014 by BigBen07

[DonovanMcnabb for H.O.F 2,241]

Most owners probably do favor expanding the playoffs.

[FartWaffles 1,857]

It's perfect where it's at with 12 playoff teams. Adding any more and you're damn near 50% of teams making the playoffs. Where's the fun in that? Makes regular season games less important. I personally don't want to see the NFL become like college basketball...

[Mentch 42]

I'm not in favor of 50% of the league getting into the playoffs, as that almost makes being a low seeded playoff team meaningless. However, I would be a fan of a system that's just like the 1 game Wild Card in baseball. In this situation, the top wild card team, or the #5 seed, would still face off against the #4 seed, but the #6 seed would host the win-and-in wild card game against the #7 seed to see who earns the right to go and play the #3 seed the following week. This would expand the season by another week but would effectively give the first 5 teams a bye week and the #1 and #2 seeds 2 weeks of rest

 

 

I'm also in favor of having home field advantage determined by record and not seeding. Division winners should still earn a playoff berth no matter what, because otherwise there's no reward for winning your division, but they shouldn't get to host a wild-card game right off the bat unless they've earned it. 12-4 wild-card teams that have fought all year through tough divisions should not have to go on the road to face 8-8 teams that struggled to win what might have been the weakest division in football

[GA_Eagle 595]

No.

[Glanvilles Grits 142]

Of course Jerry Jones favors it, his team is constantly one of the ones that just barely misses out on getting there.

 

I'm not a fan of it though. My general thought on the playoffs in the NFL is don't fix what isn't broken. I think the NFL needs to take a real good look at what happened in the MLB this past year, I know the difference is day and night and not really comparable, but the situation of change is comparable. That is, don't fix something that has worked just fine for fan viewing and excitement in the past.

 

The more teams that make the playoffs, the less meaningful I feel it will be, and it's going to take away from the nostalgia of teams actually making the playoffs. Be it just two teams, I still hold my point here.

 

If you're going to change anything, re-align the divisions again, that's always a good way to make some fun.

[AL_Royalty 489]

It's really starting to look like Al Davis was the only thing taking the focus off of Jerry's lunacy. Every time he opens his mouth, he seems to lose a little more credibility in my eyes. The Cowboys would STILL not be a playoff team, but that is beside the point.

 

The Bengals, Colts, and Packers all won their divisions and there was talk of extensions needed to avoid local blackouts due to lack of interest in playoff tickets. These are all division winners, mind you, and they were cutting it REEEAAALLLYY close with ticket sales. Now add the 8-8 Dolphins to the mix, playing the Bengals or Colts. It's not going to be a home game for the last two in, so I don't really see where the whole local stimulation thing that Jerry is talking about is coming from. Does he think that it's going to be easier to sell tickets for teams that are already struggling to fill the stands by adding two opponents that are more easily written off to the pool?

 

It just sounds to me like more of Jones taking a stand on something that is going to get a neat little write-up and by extension keeping the Cowboys in the spotlight. I might be wrong, but that's my take.

[BwareDWare94 723]

What if there was a scenario in which 7 teams would make it, in a conference? Say that benchmark is 11-5, so if the Cardinals had won on Sunday (and I think they would have had they not known they'd been eliminated by the start of the 4th quarter), and the 11-5 Pats would have gotten in a few years ago.

Consider this, one team left out is 11-5, and due to that they're added as the 7th seed, but instead of the 2 seed having to play that team in the WC round, they're given a matchup against the team with the worst overall record, so let's roll with this setup for this year's NFC (assuming AZ had actually won).

 

2. Carolina vs. 4 Green Bay

3. Philadelphia vs. 6 NO

5 SF vs. 7 AZ

 

1 seed still plays lowest remaining seed in the Divisional. It makes the seeds meaningless for one round, but everything is back to normal by divisional round.

Edited January 4, 2014 by BwareDWare94

[Vin+ 3,121]

 

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell doesn't expect the playoffs to be expanded before the 2015 season.

"I would be surprised if it happens this year," Goodell said Tuesday. "I think if it happened it probably wouldn’t happen before ’15." Goodell also said the league would consider playing Monday and Friday night playoff games under an expanded format. Whether it's this year or next, it now appears all but certain that the playoff field will be expanded to seven teams in each conference. That means only one team in each league would earn a first-round bye.

Source: Profootballtalk on NBCSports.com

[Thanatos 2,847]

So was it the universal hatred for the Patriots that prevented this from happening in '08? Or does everyone just love Arizona that much?

[Zack_of_Steel+ 3,014]

Fuck this shit.

 

As a Steelers fan, whose team would have made the playoffs under these rules the past two years...fuck this shit. If your team didn't play well enough to win their division or one of two Wild Card spots, it doesn't deserve to be in the playoffs.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Zack_of_Steel

[BigBen07 285]

Fuck this shit.

 

As a Steelers fan, whose team would have made the playoffs under these rules the past two years...fuck this shit. If your team didn't play well enough to win their division or one of two Wild Card spots, it doesn't deserve to be in the playoffs.

I fully agree. But as long as the NFL sees a chance to get more $$$$, they'll take it.

[Vin+ 3,121]

So since '00, we've had seven 10-6 teams

 

'03 Dolphins

'05 Chiefs

'07 Browns

'10 Giants

'10 Bucs

'12 Bears

'13 Cards

 

and one 11-5 team miss the playoffs:

 

'08 Pats

 

 

 

Honestly more that I was expecting.