Predicting a Super Bowl champion if the NFL used college football’s future 12-team playoff model

Next week, college football’s bowl season wraps up with the College Football Playoff. It’s the 10th anniversary of college football’s special “final four,” and while it’s a fun way to wrap up the season, it could be better. How could college football’s playoff system improve? By adding more teams, of course. That’s what will happen next year, as college football’s postseason tournament increases from four teams to 12. 

What if the NFL postseason worked like college football will next year? Where we axed the divisions, axed conferences and just put the 12 best teams in the playoffs? That’s what we are here to examine. Below, we will select the current 12 best teams in the NFL as if the season ended in Week 16, and examine how the playoff bracket would look and who would win the Super Bowl.

The selection process and final 12

Since there are no divisions and no conferences, our final 12 will resemble current power rankings. Our hypothetical “committee” consisted of CBS Sports senior writer Pete Prisco’s power rankings, ESPN’s power panel and Josh Kendall of The Athletic. I used all of their Week 17 power rankings and then acted as a fourth “member,” where I made the final call on the final list.

The most debated aspects of this list will be the top four spots, seeds five through seven, and then the “first four out,” so let’s quickly touch on those. Our top four was generally agreed upon, except The Athletic put the Buffalo Bills as a top-four team. As the member with the final say, I disagreed with that. The general consensus includes the Baltimore Ravens, San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins and Detroit Lions.

As for seeds five through seven, the Bills and Eagles would actually be tied if we simply added up the rankings from the three outlets, while the Cowboys were slightly behind. However, we put Dallas ahead of Philadelphia considering the former recently beat the latter by 20. The…


Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/predicting-a-super-bowl-champion-if-the-nfl-used-college-footballs-future-12-team-playoff-model/

Author : Jordan Dajani

Publish date : 2023-12-29 19:26:14

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