Goodell serious about expanding NFL playoffs

Goodell believes one change the NFL could make is to expand the playoffs.

"That is under serious consideration," he said. "We think it's one of the great things about the NFL, besides the fact that it's unscripted. Every team and their fans start the season with hope. You mentioned the fact that for 11 straight years we've had a team go from last to first, that's unique to professional football and the NFL, that doesn't happen in other sports. And that's because we have such a competitive league and we want to keep that."

Clearly the NFL wants to continue to manufacture as much of the Week 17 drama as we saw in 2013.

"The races we had this past season, we had 16 games every weekend, the final weekend we have division games, so your opponent is a division opponent and 13 of those 16 games had playoff implications on the final day of the season," Goodell continued. "That's extraordinary and we want to keep that. If we could increase that, and again this is about believing in better, can you make it better, can you make those (division) races better by adding two more teams? That's compelling and that's what we're looking at."

Goodell wants more teams involved in the playoff hunt so that there are more compelling late-season games, leading to more tickets sold and higher television ratings. The expected proposal that owners will vote on in March will be to add one more Wild Card team in each conference. Under that scenario, only one team in each conference would get a bye while the six-game Wild Card weekend would pit the No. 2 seed vs. No. 7, No. 3 vs. No. 6 and No. 4 vs. No. 5. This year, the No. 7 seeds would have been the Cardinals in the NFC and the Steelers in the AFC.

It's fine the way it is. Just like most things that Roger wants to change.

Sweet! Then we can make it and get bounced bad on national TV!

Sweet! Then we can make it and get bounced bad on national TV!

The NFL while exciting (I guess) is already horribly watered down. Our SB teams are barely above average and if we ran the 2012 playoffs 10 different times we would have 10 different SB winners. I actually want the days were we had a great team (or 2) that would run through the playoffs.

And how sad is it that Miami still cant get anything going with this mediocre level of competition.

I was thinking that everyone in the NFL should get a trophy at the end of the year, it's the FAIR thing to do.