What a College Football Playoff for the NFL Would Look Like

Tuesday, November 5th, was a monumental day for the landscape of America.

That’s right! The NFL Trade Deadline and the first College Football Playoff Bracket reveal happened!

In all seriousness, sports was on the back burner on Tuesday despite how monumental both events were in a normal calendar setting.

While the NFL may be the largest business conglomerate in the world, it is ultimately just entertainment and hypotheticals that we love to argue about as escapism.

So, that’s what we’re going to talk about here. With the first iteration of the 12-team college football playoff coming out and the trade deadline being a checkpoint in terms of the completion of the season, we’re going to take a look at the rules from the college format and see what it would look like if the NFL had those same rules.

We’ll review the rules and judge the teams based on the resumes.

In college, the four highest-ranked conference champions are the 1-4 seeds that receive a bye, so we’ll make those the four best division leaders.

The rest are the ones we’ll get to argue about based on what a hypothetical NFL Playoff Committee would do with the remaining spots.

These would be the division-leading teams on bye:

1) Kansas City Chiefs

2) Detroit Lions

3) Buffalo Bills

4) Washington Commanders

PHOTO: Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images

The Chiefs are the obvious 1 seed—undisputed back-to-back champions with an undefeated record. Our committee wouldn’t want to place anyone above them because the crowns are theirs until proven otherwise, even if Mahomes has only had one game with 3 passing touchdowns this year, and it hasn’t been the same electrifying offense. 

Detroit has to be the 2 with the next-best record and dominant on both sides of the ball, even without Aiden Hutchinson for the year, who they just so happened to replace with Za’Darius Smith from Cleveland at the trade deadline. They’re winning without even needing Goff to sling it yet, and it’s the most creative scheme in football that wants to punish you with only one loss to Tampa and 4 games where they’ve scored over 30 points.

The Bills have the AFC East essentially wrapped up before Thanksgiving at 7-2, with only losses to a juggernaut Baltimore team on the road and a game to Houston, where Allen was pretty much concussed. Aside from that, Allen has only thrown 1 interception and looks as unstoppable as ever, even when we thought he’d regress with this skill position group.

In what could be up for debate, the Commanders are going to take the 4th spot as the last division leader. They’ve been the over-achievers and pleasant surprise of the year, and the ceiling of Jayden Daniels is what would move the committee to take them over the rest with a 7-2 record, the “Heisman moment” with the Hail Mary(land), and an offense that put up historical numbers through the first month of the year.

Here’s the rest of the bracket without the caveat of needing to be a division leader. We’re going just based off of resume here, so the teams wouldn’t get a bye, and we’ll look into the matchups:

5) Baltimore Ravens

6) Philadelphia Eagles

7) Pittsburgh Steelers

8) Minnesota Vikings

9) Atlanta Falcons

10) Green Bay Packers

11) Houston Texans

12) Arizona Cardinals

Despite not leading the division, you’d have to have the Ravens as the best non-bye team in the league. They had two bad losses against the Jameis-led Browns, where their secondary was depleted, and a clunker against the Raiders that will go down as the “what happened there” loss of the year, but having Lamar look the best he ever has and Derrick Henry factored into the equation, their A-game may be better than anyone else.

At 6, you have to give it to the Eagles, a game back of the Commanders at 6-2, and doing so despite Nick Sirianni being a net negative as a coach who wants to fight the fans! They’re a Saquon drop away in Atlanta from being 7-1, but his offense has taken Hurts to another level this year, and the secondary looks figured out.

The Steelers are here at 7 on the Mike Tomlin pedigree! We continue to doubt his brilliance and claim this is the year they’ll falter below .500, which is why the committee would still have Baltimore ahead. But you have to respect the 6-2 record and an offense that looks fresh, with a Russell Wilson renaissance coming.

The Vikings are in that same boat as Pittsburgh at 8, where we respect the 6-2 record and being top-10 on both sides of the ball with the Brian Flores blitz-happy defense, but Sam Darnold has made some “you’re about to be revealed as a fraud” passes the last several weeks where we keep waiting for it to fall off. However, the “Justin Jefferson is down there somewhere” formula always works!

Atlanta is at 9 with their 6-3 record because someone has to win the NFC South, right? And they’re finally throwing it to Kyle Pitts!

Green Bay fell to 10, with Jordan Love looking very reminiscent of the lowlights of turnover-prone Brett Favre with his poor performance at home in a loss to Detroit this week. However, they’re still 6-3 despite Love’s battles with injuries, and Matt Lefleur is undefeated, starting Malik Willis in his stead this year.

The Texans are leading the AFC South at 6-3 but have not had their A-game aside from one 41-21 win against the Patriots. They’ve been decimated with injuries to the entire receiving core, now losing Stefon Diggs for the year and Nico Collins being out for an extended period of time, and CJ Stroud has to actively work to put up points behind one of the most penalized lines in the league. It’s a milquetoast Texans team relative to expectations.

Lastly, at the 12 spot, we’d have to have Arizona in as the de facto NFC West division leader. They’re 5-4 and a half games up on the Rams by the skin of their teeth but are trending upward with three straight wins, are undefeated in the division, and only have two bad losses to Washington and Green Bay.

The Bengals, Cowboys, Rams, 49ers, Chargers, Jets, and Bucs are all some teams that would be on the outside looking in.

The first-round matchups would be:

• 5 Baltimore Ravens vs 12 Arizona Cardinals
• 8 Minnesota Vikings vs 9 Atlanta Falcons
• 6 Philadelphia Eagles vs 11 Houston Texans
• 7 Pittsburgh Steelers vs 10 Green Bay Packers

Interested in more week-to-week soap opera reality TV drama.

Roger Goodell?

PHOTO: Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images