The NFL playoffs are staying the same ... for now, at least. The Detroit Lions scrapped a proposal that would drastically alter how the playoffs were seeded ahead of a league vote Wednesday, according to multiple reports.
Could NFL shift playoff format in future? Yes. League office strongly interested in making late regular-season games make meaningful ahead of selling next media rights deal.
— Jori Epstein (@JoriEpstein) May 21, 2025
But support for current proposal not there. Playoff structure stays for 2025 season. https://t.co/NkwNKBuC0X
Detroit reportedly did not have enough support for the proposal, and opted to take it off the table before team owners voted on it.
The proposal aimed to change how the NFL seeded the playoffs. If the Lions' proposal was accepted, the teams with the best records would get the highest seeding in the playoffs. That's a massive change over the current format, where division winners get the top-four seeds in each conference.
The Lions' proposal sought to reward teams with better regular-season records. Under the current playoff-seeding system, a division winner with a 10-7 record would be seeded higher than a wild-card team that went 14-3. Despite having a better record, that wild-card team would have to go on the road for its first playoff game.
That's exactly what happened last year, as the wild-card 14-3 Minnesota Vikings had to go on the road to play the division-winning 10-7 Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the playoffs. The Vikings lost that contest.
This story will be updated.
