National Football League team owners are scheduled Tuesday to vote on a proposal to expand the league's playoffs to 16 teams this season and replace the current format with a seeded bracket formula if a "meaningful" game is cancelled due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, Yahoo sports reported.
The plan was devised by the league's competition committee via conference call last week out of concern that another slate of games could be postponed.
Club owners in March approved a plan to expand the playoff field from 12 to 14 teams for this season. If approved on Tuesday, two additional teams – one from each conference – would be added.
The further expansion of the playoff field would include the four division winners in each conference and four wild-card teams in the respective conferences with the four next-best records.
Since 2002, the six qualifying teams in each conference were seeded based upon record and the two teams with the best records received a bye through the first round of the playoffs, while the four remaining teams faced off in single-elimination games.
The teams were paired for the second round based upon seeding.
Under the proposal before the club owners, there would be no bye. The team with the best record in each conference, the No. 1 seed, would play the team with the worst record, the No. 8 seed; the second-best team would play the seventh-best; third-best vs. sixth-best; and fourth-best would play the fifth-best.
Winning teams would then be paired again based on seeding.
So far, 14 NFL games have been postponed and rescheduled, taking advantage of the "bye" week – or non-game playing week – each team has built into its schedule.
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