Josh Thornton

​It took over a quarter of a century but the NFL has expanded the playoff field and its structure. We will now see 7 teams from each conference make the post-season. With this expansion comes the removal of one first round bye. Now only the best team in each conference will get to rest up during the wild card round. 

​This change has been met with some criticism. The loudest gripe is the new format could allow a “sub-par” team to make the post-season. A team that is hovering around 8-8 or 9-7 could find themselves with an opportunity to make some noise. There is a belief that allowing an additional team from each conference to participate in the postseason will “water down” the attractiveness of the Wild Card round. I disagree with this sentiment. In my world, more football is never a bad thing. Who doesn’t love an underdog? A Cinderella team grinding through the post-season gauntlet all the way to a Lombardi trophy.  

​All this talk of sub-par teams and Cinderella stories has me thinking… if this had always been the format, would it have ever helped the Browns into the playoffs?Specifically, post-rebirth Browns teams. That group has needed the most help through the years. Mostly more help than this format change would provide, but there should have been a few seasons in 20 years where the Browns were the benefactors, right?

​Aside from the lone playoff appearance in 2002, the browns have been one game on the outside looking in a whopping ONE time. One. That lone ranger would have been the infamous 2007 season. You know, that season where all we had to do was beat the Bengals and we’re in. Thanks to Andersons 4 interceptions that day the Browns were just a smidge on the wrong side of the cutoff. 1 game. Oh, so close.

​The other 19 season the team was pretty much not even close at all. Save a couple of seasons where we needed every tie breaker and 4 straight wins down the stretch, the Browns were too far away to even sniff playoff aspirations most of the time. Yeah… that was a fun trip down memory lane.

​So, lets get to the question I posed in the title to this article; does the playoff expansion help bad teams reach post-season competition? Probably not. Will a few stinkers sneak in there…sure; but the majority will be decent, fringe teams. How about the quality of play? It the damn National Football League. Pro football. The quality will not suffer. In fact, your odds of seeing a great showing actually increase…. In my opinion. Underdogs get scrappy. Especially when fighting for their life. 

​What’s that? Oh, you’re right. I didn’t answer the question I posed in the title. Not specifically. Does this expansion help the Cleveland Browns? The answer to that lies in how you feel about the team. Are they the 5-11 Browns of old, or are they closer to the 10-6 Browns? I’d venture to bet the latter. Yeah, I’d say this change helps the Browns. Probably more than most teams given where they are at in their NFL evolution. 

Give me the 7th seed, I’ll gladly take it.

I’ll tell you this too… there will be no damn asterisk.

Go Browns.