The playoffs should be expanded up to the fourth team spot and not have a first round bye week. Many around the upper levels of the league consider this to be “dumb” or “stupid” since “half the league will be in the playoffs.” Consider this, the sim is not perfect and will never be perfect. The way of determining tiebreakers sometimes is not always the best method for every situation and sometimes can leave the third team and fourth team in a conference in a bit of a pickle that does not allow for the best teams to be in the playoffs. The best example of a season where four teams should have been playing for the playoffs is in the S24 ASFC where all of the top four teams were faced with a 9-7 record with only the conference records dividing the teams for those spots. One could argue that that is plenty of separation needed for determining the best teams, but as stated before the sim is not perfect. Sometimes your team slips to the fourth spot in a four way tie through some bad luck on the sims many failures that allow for some of the dumbest decisions to be made by teams no matter how hard they try to send the best chances. The fact that 2% of games can have a quarterback throw five interceptions at random should be enough to have a failsafe for the playoffs regardless. If the fourth team does not win, then that is fine but you cannot say “they don’t deserve to play” unless they prove it. I am aware not every fourth team spot is the same as the S24 Arizona Outlaws, but we need to have a better playoff system to account for teams like them.
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