Dan Patrick makes feelings known about Lions’ proposed rule change of seeding division winners for playoffs

Dan Patrick gave his opinion on the Lions' proposed rule changes to the playoffs on his show by comparing it to what Mike Florio is proposing as a compromise. Detroit, who were the NFC's top seed last year, finished one game ahead of Minnesota in their division and saw the Vikings drop to the fifth seed as a result, since all divisional winners lock up the top four spots. That also brings the added incentive of staging a home playoff game against the Wild Card team.

Dan Patrick said that he welcomed all such conversations because he feels they make the game of football better. He framed it as a pertinent question that needed to be asked as to whether the Vikings deserved to be penalized simply for being in the same NFC North division as the Lions, despite having a better record than the Rams, whom they had to face away on the road.

“I'm open to all of these conversations because I think you always have to be open. What can make the game better? You know, do we punish the Vikings? They had the second-best record, but then we're going to make them the fifth seed in the NFC."

Dan Patrick also had a theory of why the Lions are proposing this rule change despite having won the division and the conference last season. He thinks that the NFC North saw three teams make it to the postseason and the Bears look likely to improve. Therefore, Detroit wants to prevent what happened to Minnesota in the 2024 season from happening to them.

"And the Lions are proposing this because probably the NFC North is so stacked, and the Bears are going to get better as well. And you might have this log jam again, but that's the proposal by the Lions."

Dan Patrick contrasts Lions' playoffs plans against Mike Florio's suggestions

The Lions suggest that the divisional winners and the three next best-placed teams make it to the playoffs, as they do now, but then all the seedings would be based on the regular-season record. Mike Florio, on the other hand, thinks this removes the incentive of the home-field advantage that many teams might be working towards and proposes a minimum cutoff to be eligible to host a game.

"And then Florio's response is, how about we just make a minimum requirement to host a playoff game? And you know, you always think back to Seattle, when Seattle was, what, seven and nine, and then they hosted a playoff game against the Saints, and everybody was up in arms, but they won their division.”

Dan Patrick brought up the 2010 season's Wild Card playoff game as an example of why he thinks Mike Florio's suggestions have value. The 7-9 Seahawks gained an advantage over the 11-5 Saints because they were the winners of a poor NFC West division and proceeded to win the knockout game at home.