Mark Schlereth pushes for NFL playoff reseeding citing personal postseason experience: "We whooped that a**"

The NFL Playoff format could be gowing through a major change ahead of the 2025 NFL season. The league owners are set to take a vote during the offseason to potentially allow conference seeding to based off of record alone. If passed, it would mean that division winners would not be guaranteed a home game during the postseason.

Former NFL player and current analyst Mark Schlereth recently chimed in on the debate surrounding whether or not reseeding would be a good change to the current playoff format. He explained his stance druing a recent episode of Breakfast Ball and used his personal posteason experience as a reference.

Schlereth explained:

"Why should you reward a division winner who's got a bad record? I mean, I've been on a Wild Card team that won a world championship. We went to an AFC Championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers and had a better record than the Steelers, and you know what we did, we whooped that a**."

Schlereth continued:

"I understand it, like it wouldn't bother me at all to say, 'Hey let's receive this thing, and let's give the people with the great records, even if you're a wild card, and just because you're in a great division, you shouldn't be penalized.' "

Mark Schlereth won three Super Bowl rings during his career with the Washington Commanders and Denver Broncos. He explained that he had to on the road to defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in an AFC Championship game, despite his team having the better record that year.

Despite winning the game anyway, Schlereth expressed that the Steelers should not have been rewarded for having a worse record, even though they won the AFC North that year. He is clearly inf avor of making of the change and the NFL owners will vote on the potential new format in the coming days of the 2025 offseason.

NFL Playoff reseeding explained

Mark Schlereth

The current format for the NFL Playoffs features seven teams from each conference. The field is determined by including the four division winners and three wild card teams with the next-best records in the conference. All four divisional champions are guaranteed at least one home game, but this detail could be changed via an owners vote during the 2025 offseason.

If the owners vote to approve the proposed reseeding rule, the seven teams to make the playoffs in each conference would not change. What the rule would alter is how the teams are seeded and which of them play at home. After the field is officially determined, the seven teams would be reseeded based on their records alone and would not take into account whether or not they won their division.