Measuring the Impact of the NFL's Scheduling on Playoff Races
By Jason Lisk
Fast forward three months into the season, and seven of the eight divisions have a division leader with a game or less lead in its division with four weeks left. Seems like it’s been a rousing success, right? Well, let’s break it down.
I’m pretty sure that this year is an anomaly when it comes to the number of close division races, as the schedule has had very little to do (so far) with dictating that teams atop the divisions are reasonably close. We just so happen to have some divisions with mediocrity, where the teams are bunched together. If this change had been instituted last year, you still would have had New Orleans and Indianapolis clinching their divisions very early, and San Diego running away with the AFC West. Having divisional games in those cases would not have changed things.
To try to estimate the impact of the scheduling shift to exclusively divisional games in week 17, I went back through each season since the 32 team format was adopted (2002). I then re-arranged the actual results to force a divisional matchup in week 17. With both home and road results, twelve combinations exist within each division each year. I compared the real life results to the results that would have occurred with forced divisional games in week 17. Now, this makes a big assumption – that the results would have been the same if ordered differently – but we’ll set that aside for now.
- From 2002-2009, 11 of 64 divisions (17.2%) were “in play” entering week 17, where the results of games had an impact on who would win the division. 2 of the 64 divisions (3.1%) featured “showdown” games: head to head matchups that decided the division winner (San Diego-Denver in 2008, Philadelphia-Dallas in 2009). Combined, 20.3% of divisions would have been undecided entering week 17.
- If only division games were played in week 17, 16.9% of divisions would have been “in play” entering week 17, and 11.5% of divisions would have featured “showdown” games. Combined, 28.4% of divisions would have been undecided entering week 17.
You may notice that the difference is the number of head to head show down games, which increased from 3.1% of divisions to a projected 11.5%. Let’s put those in some hard numbers. It should increase the number of showdowns by a little more than 1 game (1.34 to be exact) every two seasons. Overall, 8% more divisions would be in doubt entering the final week with this change.
That’s a high end estimate though. In reality, some of these division races tightened up after the division winner had clinched and rested starters, so that my simulation assumes those games were legitimate, and treats some of those divisions as being in play with the right game combinations. I would say that the estimate of an 8% increase in division races in doubt is too high.
However, I’m not opposed to this scheduling change. I just don’t want its impact to be oversold in this season where we happen to already have a bunch of competitive division races. While I doubt it dramatically decreases the meaningless games in the final week over the next decade, what it will do is give us a few more attractive matchups. The television partners, particularly NBC, which gets to select its week 17 game after week 16 is played, should have 1-2 attractive games with direct impact on a division title. Getting an early playoff game is never a bad thing.
This year, the following matchups still have the potential of giving us a head-to-head showdown for a division title:
AFC West: Oakland (6-6) at Kansas City (8-4)
AFC South: Tennessee (5-7) at Indianapolis (6-6) OR Jacksonville (7-5) at Houston (6-6)
NFC West: St. Louis (6-6) at Seattle (6-6)
NFC North: Chicago (9-3) at Green Bay (8-4)
[photo via Getty]