The Rise of NFL Wild Card Teams
How wild card teams have narrowed the gap against division winners in the first round of the NFL playoffs
It’s late December, and as the end of the year draws closer, so do the final weeks of the NFL regular season. The AFC and NFC playoff pictures are set. The most exciting time of the year in football is unfolding before us, and even Jim Mora will agree that it’s definitely time to start talking about playoffs.
As you may already know, the NFL’s playoff seeding system is not based entirely on overall record. Each of the four division winners from the NFC and AFC get the top four seeds in their conference. Two non-division-winners from each conference get a wild card spot and pick up the fifth and sixth seeds.
The top two seeds get a bye for the first week, and the remaining four teams from each conference play each other on wild card weekend. Home-field advantage is based on seeding, and the highest seed plays the lowest available seed.
This system has been in place since 2002 when the Houston Texans joined the NFL and the league reorganized teams into eight divisions of four teams each.
Life isn’t fair, and neither is the NFL
The non-linear seeding system means that wild card teams often have better records than division winners, yet are seeded lower and have to play on the road. This creates an undue advantage for weak-division winners who get to play at home by virtue of their higher seed.
The ‘normalization’ ensures that wild card games are usually a toss-up, which can create close, extremely watchable contests. Compare this instead to Game 1 of the first round of the NBA playoffs between a #1 seed and a #8 seed (the #8 seed has won a total of 5 such series since 1984) — which game would you rather watch?
The obvious question is whether the NFL system is fair. If you are a low-seeded wild card team with a better record than a division winner, you might say it’s not. But recent numbers may provide some encouragement.
Before 2013, division winners used their favorable position to win home playoff games even when their wild card opponents came in to the playoffs with better regular season records. But in the last five years, wild card teams have narrowed the gap significantly. Lower seeds have won more since 2013 than ever before, even though a greater majority of division winners have better records in this time period than their wild card opponents.
You can still argue that a wild card team is required to play an extra game even if it has the second-best record in its conference, as may happen with the Los Angeles Chargers this year. My counter-point is this — in order to even get to the Super Bowl as a wild card team, you will have to play a top-two seed in the divisional round and likely the conference championship. So if you can’t beat a 9–7 division winner on the road in the first round of the playoffs, then you don’t deserve to play a 12–4 team in the next round.
Bodies in Motion Like to Stay in Motion
So what determines whether the wild cards will beat the division winners? One of the maxims always tossed out there is the importance of momentum. Late-season wins supposedly count more than early-season wins, because they indicate a team is “peaking at the right time.” The data, however, suggests that momentum doesn’t matter much (at least not on wild card weekend).
Since 2002, teams that have won all five of their last regular season games have also won their wild card game roughly 80% of the time, but teams with three wins have done better than teams with four wins, and teams with two wins have done better still.
There have been two teams that made the playoffs despite winning only one of their last five regular season games (the 2012 Baltimore Ravens and the 2004 Minnesota Vikings). Both teams went on to win their wild card games, and the Ravens actually won the Super Bowl that year.
Keep in mind — these are wild card teams or low-seed division winners that are often trying their best to make it to the playoffs, not top seeds with guaranteed byes that are luxuriously resting their players because they can. And this makes the Ravens’ post-season turnaround even more impressive.
Defense doesn’t necessarily win wild card games
Defense may purportedly win championships, but a high-ranked defense does not guarantee a win in wild card games. If anything, higher ranked offenses and regular season turnover margin are better indicators of first-round playoff success.
Teams that came in to wild card games with higher turnover margins than their opponents have a 36–28 record in wild card games since 2002, while teams with higher-ranked offenses than their opponents have won 39 of 64 wild card games in the same time period.
A Game of Ratings
The NFL has by far the shortest post-season amongst the four major US sports leagues. The MLB, NHL, and NBA all hold several rounds of multi-game series, but the NFL sends few teams to the post-season and has a unique single-game elimination format throughout the playoffs.
This system places enormous pressure on NFL players and coaches, as each play, and each decision, threatens to have far-reaching consequences. It also increases the impact of external factors like injuries and home-field advantage, and creates an overall tense atmosphere for each game.
This, of course, makes for compelling television, and the ratings speak for themselves. Despite the slump in recent years, NFL playoff games routinely rank among the highest-rated programming on television; wild card games alone draw a TV audience that is generally greater than even the NBA finals or the World Series.
What is very apparent from all of the data is that wild card games are literally “wild cards,” i.e. they are hard to predict. Coupled with the one-off nature of the games, and the limited number of teams playing, they are nearly always must-watch events.
This year promises no less. There are some very strong teams in the wild card slot this year, both in the NFC and the AFC, and as we have seen, anything can happen on wild card weekend. I, for one, can’t wait.
All statistical information is extracted from Pro Football Reference. The unmodified cover image is obtained from Keith Allison under an Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license. The opinions and analysis expressed in this article are those of the author alone.
