I'm starting to believe that the NFL should move the playoff bye week from the week before the Super Bowl to the week after the regular season.
That would give the teams that have fired their coaches in the hours after the season more time to conduct interviews and get people hired, and, given the extra time to let things settle down, it might actually get more people thinking about the wild card games themselves instead of all the coaching and personnel rumors that pop up every 3 1/2 seconds or so.
This would give injured players (Minnesota's Pat Williams, the Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger) an extra week to heal, give teams an extra week to prepare and hopefully make for more competitive wild card games.
Over the past four seasons most of the wild-card matchups have been ugly. There been a few competitive games -- Jaguars-Steelers last season; Seahawks-Cowboys and Eagles-Giants in 2006; and Jets-Chargers in 2004 -- but the average margin of victory in the wild-card round since 2004 is 12.6 points.
Ten of the 16 wild-card games played since 2004 have been decided by at least 10 points; only four have been decided by seven or fewer points.
Another advantage of moving the bye week would be eliminating that interminable two-week layoff between the championship games and the Super Bowl, with the bonus benefit of scrapping the NFL's plans to hold the 2010 Pro Bowl that week in Miami. (And having the Pro Bowl the week before the Super Bowl is a terrible idea for two big reasons: 1. None of the Pro Bowl players involved in the Super Bowl could participate, and 2. What happens when the game is in Indianapolis and players who gladly played because of the chance to take their families to Hawaii for a week are now faced with the prospect of selling their wives on spending a week in central Indiana in the dead of winter?)
Mainly I'm in favor of moving the playoff bye week this because this morning when I woke up, instead of thinking about tomorrow's wild card matchup between the Eagles and Vikings, I was thinking about Bill Cowher and the Cleveland Browns.
This is disturbing for a couple of reasons.
1. No one should ever wake up thinking about Bill Cowher except Mrs. Bill Cowher, Bill's daughters, his parents and, maybe, Randy Lerner.
2. The Eagles have been my favorite team since the late 1970s, when I was deciding between the Cowboys, Steelers and Eagles and went with Ron Jaworski, mainly, I think, because Jaworski seemed like a homely guy who needed all the fans he could get.
-- John Dudley