There’s a history between the Los Angeles Rams and the National Football League’s expansion of the playoff. The Rams missed out on the 2019 postseason despite a 9-7 record. With the next collective bargaining agreement (CBA), the following season the NFL added a seventh team to the playoff bracket for each conference—expanding to 14 teams total.
In the five years since introducing the seventh seed to the postseason, we can safely say this has been a mistake.
The seventh seeds are 1-9. Not only are their victories improbable, but they’ve largely been non-competitive with only two of 10 games being decided by a single score.