Super Wild Card Weekend is now Super Duper Wild Card Three-Day Weekend, one of the benefits of the expansion of the season from 17 to 18 weeks. The change allows the NFL to avoid a conflict with the college football championship game, and to generate the massive ratings that will come from a Saturday night, Sunday night, and Monday night platform.
The numbers will be massive. The money will be massive. And the competitive problems aren’t nearly as significant as some are suggesting.
Surely, whoever wins the Monday night game won’t have to play until the following Sunday, in the divisional round. Often, a Sunday wild card winner plays the following Saturday.
As Peter King pointed out on PFT Live, the teams who play in the Monday night game get a huge advantage. Instead of playing at 1:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, six days after the last Sunday of the regular season, those two teams get two extra days to rest and to prepare. Plenty of coaches would trade eight days to get ready for the wild card round if it means six days on the back end.
Then there’s this important question, one that will undoubtedly emerge once the NFL sees the ratings from the Monday night playoff game. Why not move one of the Saturday divisional round games to Monday night? Ultimately, why not make the AFC/NFC championship games a Sunday night and Monday night experience?
If feels like when but not if. Because there’s no “if” about the massive value of shifting NFL action from a weekend to a weekday, at a time when the biggest possible audience will tune in.