A two-possession overtime proposal has a better chance of winning NFL owners’ favor, maybe for a one-year trial, than the proposal to expand the playoffs from 12 to 14 teams, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Monday at league meetings.
Getting rid of playoff byes has become a bigger issue than playoff expansion, so Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt prefers an expansion to 16 playoff teams, half the league, a proposal that isn’t even on the table for this meeting. But Hunt is lobbying fellow owners for a future playoff expansion vote, perhaps to coincide with a new television contract in 2005.
A 16-game playoff would eliminate the byes now enjoyed by the top two teams in each conference as well as add four games for television to sell. Since the current format started in 1990, 22 of the 26 Super Bowl participants have started the playoffs with byes.
“It’s a tremendous inequity for one or two teams to have a bye. Very unfair,” Hunt said. “No other league does this. Why take your four most attractive teams and give them a week off?”
Hunt is not at all worried about cheapening the playoffs by allowing 16 teams to advance.
“In promoting our game, one of the key things is to be a playoff team,” Hunt said. “I know statistically some argue it would be a trashy situation (to have half the league in the playoffs), but if the No. 1 team beats the No. 8 team, so be it. It would broaden interest.”
The proposal on the table at this meeting has little chance of passing because Tagliabue admitted only one bye per conference would “foreordain the two teams in the Super Bowl.”
Since proposals require a 75 percent majority to pass, it is often easy to predict failure. In the case of the overtime proposal, Tagliabue isn’t sure. Owners usually follow the lead of their coaches on football matters, but coaches are split on whether and how to change.
“I think there is considerable support for change. Whether it gets 24 votes, I don’t know,” he said. “There is a growing feeling among ownership that too high a percentage of [overtime] games are influenced by who wins the coin toss. You don’t have to be a football expert to make that judgment, so owners are prepared to make it on their own.”
Competition committee co-chairmen Rich McKay, general manager of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Jeff Fisher, Tennessee Titans coach, favor the two-possession rule, but reported their committee is split. The committee assembled a three-page paper defining possession. For example, if a defensive player intercepts a pass, takes two steps and fumbles the ball away, the defensive team had its possession. If a defensive team blocks a punt, but the punter recovers and runs for a first down, it does not count as a defensive possession.
No decision: The league does not expect to make a decision on whether to fine the Detroit Lions for violating the newly adopted guidelines on diversity hiring after five minority candidates refused to interview for the head coaching opening filled by Steve Mariucci.
Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney, chairman of a new “diversity in the workplace” committee, said he thought the Lions were in violation, but Tagliabue said the “complex set of circumstances is not an easy process to manage.”
The Lions tipped their hand by not firing coach Marty Mornhinweg until the San Francisco 49ers fired Mariucci, so the mandate to interview minority candidates lost its purpose of opening the process.
Free-agent news: Minnesota signed Detroit linebacker Chris Claiborne to a two-year deal. Terms weren’t released. Claiborne led the Lions with 102 tackles last season and had 4.5 sacks. . . . Restricted free-agent linebacker Na’il Diggs signed an offer sheet to leave Green Bay and join Detroit.
Johnson a Ram: Bears general manager Jerry Angelo said he expects to make up for the loss of free-agent utility player Leon Johnson, who signed with the Rams on Friday, through the draft. “We wanted to re-sign him, but we wanted to wait until the draft anyway,” Angelo said. “I think we need a change-of-pace back.”
Extra picks: The Bears will have extra draft choices at the end of the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds because of “net” free agency losses last year. They lost James Allen, Walt Harris and Tony Parrish and signed Mike Caldwell.
Scheduling: Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay will visit Philadelphia on the opening Monday night of the season in a rematch of last season’s NFC championship game.
The Sept. 8 game is one of four announced by the NFL on Monday for the opening weekend of the season. The opening game–the New York Jets at Washington on Thursday, Sept. 4–was announced earlier. The rest of the schedule will be made public in the next few weeks.
NFL Europe on: The owners voted to continue NFL Europe despite the war in Iraq. “We’re an American business in Europe,” Tagliabue said. “Like other American businesses, we have to continue on.”
