Wild Card Weekend
By The Gold Sheet
We've been around long enough (53 seasons!) at THE GOLD SHEET to remember the pro football "wildcard" concept before the term was ever used. Indeed, the idea of non-winners of divisions or conferences actually making the playoffs was a foreign one until the old AFL broke with tradition in its final year of 1969, "expanding" its playoffs from two to four teams by inviting the runners-up in the old East and West Divisions into the postseason mix. Which is how the AFL ended up with two Western teams, Oakland and Kansas City, squaring off in the '69 title game after the championship battle had been drawn along East vs. West lines for the previous nine seasons. For the record, the Chiefs and Houston Oilers were the "extra" AFL playoff qualifiers that season, with Kansas City ending the championship reign of Joe Namath's Jets in a cold and windy Shea Stadium, 13-6, while the Oilers were bombed by the Raiders, 56-7, the following day. The Chiefs, of course, would go on to beat Oakland to win the final AFL title before upsetting Minnesota in the Super Bowl, technically becoming the first "wildcard" Super Bowl winner...before the term was even hatched!
The "wildcard" label officially became part of pro football lexicon the following season in 1970, the first year of the merged NFL, when the best division runners-up in the newly-named NFC and AFC were invited to the postseason. Detroit and Miami were the first "officially" named wildcard teams that year, and neither fared well that postseason, the Lions losing by an odd 5-0 score in a nonetheless pulsating defensive struggle at Dallas, while the Dolphins (who would be heard from again soon) succumbed to the Raiders in the Oakland mud, 21-14. The first post-merger wildcard winner was Baltimore (Colts, not Ravens), a 20-3 victor at Cleveland in 1971. Through 1977, wildcards were the 4th playoff seed in each conference, and there were no "bye" weeks in the playoffs until the week before the Super Bowl.
The introduction of a second wildcard team from each conference and the "wildcard round" coincided with the NFL expanding its regular-season schedule from 14 to 16 games (and playoff entrants from 8 to 10) in '78. For the next twelve seasons, those wildcard teams would face off against each other before the winners would advance to join the division champions from the AFC & NFC in the round of eight. There were changes again in 1990, when a third wildcard team was added to each conference, upping the total number of postseason participants to 12. This also doubled the number of games in wildcard weekend (from 2 to 4), as then only the top two division winners from each conference would get a "bye" in the first round, and the division winner with the worst record was thrown in with the wildcard teams for the initial playoff weekend. When the NFL reconfigured its divisions (from 6 to 8) in 2002, the wildcard round wasn't fundamentally altered. Although there would technically be only two wildcards (as opposed to three), there would still be the same four games in wildcard weekend, which now featured the two division winners with the worst records along with two wildcard entries from each conference.
In the meantime, the history of the wildcard round has proven rather colorful, starting with that first season in 1978, when Philadelphia and Atlanta were involved in a Christmas Eve nailbiter at old Fulton County Stadium. The Falcons, behind QB Steve Bartkowski, rallied for a pair of late TDs to take the lead before the Eagles' Mike Michel missed a last-second 34-yard field goal, giving Atlanta a 14-13 win. In the AFC, Houston, featuring rookie (and future Hall-of-Fame) RB Earl Campbell, won at Miami 17-9. The Oilers were back again in 1979 wildcard action, and though Campbell and QB Dan Pastorini were both KO'd in the 2nd half, Houston hung on to beat Red Miller's last Denver playoff team at the Astrodome, 13-7. Oakland's magical run through the 1980 playoffs began with a 27-7 wildcard win over the same Houston bunch (now ironically QB'd by longtime Raider Ken Stabler), ending Bum Phillips' days as Oilers coach in the process.
The wildcard round has often produced memorable games since, such as Buffalo's remarkable rally from a 35-3 deficit behind backup QB Frank Reich to overtake the Oilers in OT, 41-38, in 1992. The Bills were involved on the other end of a wild card round-thriller in 1999, victim of Tennessee's "Music City Miracle" 22-16 win, while San Francisco won a couple of hard-to-forget first-round heart-stoppers at home against the Packers in 1998 (30-27 in an unforgettable Steve Young vs. Brett Favre clash) and Giants in 2002 (39-38). Dallas and Seattle engaged in a memorable nailbiter in 2006, with the Cowboys botching a last-second, chip shot FG that allowed the host Seahawks to escape with a 21-20 win, while the Chargers survived a classic battle at Qualcomm Stadium vs. the Colts a year ago when prevailing by a 23-17 count in overtime. The occasional wildcard team has also ended up catching fire in the postseason and has gone all of the way to win the Super Bowl, including the 1997 Broncos, 2000 Ravens, 2005 Steelers, and 2007 Giants (as well as the '69 Chiefs and '80 Raiders).
There have also been a few different pointspread characteristics related to wildcard games compared to later playoff rounds. In particular, underdog teams have more than held their own in these first-round games (a bit of a departure from division round and conference title action), especially the shorter-priced (1-3 point) dogs that stand 24-16-2 vs. the number since '78, including 7-2 the last three years. Home dogs, usually rare in playoff action, have nonetheless popped up four times in wildcard-round battles the past two seasons (3-1 vs. line in those games) and are a noteworthy 11-3 vs. the number in first-round games since '78. Overall, wildcard dogs are 52-43-3 since '78. Although many believe the absence of the top two conference seeds in the wild card rounds has contributed to better overall underdog mark than in subsequent rounds, it's worth noting that one-sided results are still fairly common in the first-round games, with 7 of 16 since 2005 being decided by 14 points or more, as have close to half of them (44 of 98) since the wildcard round was introduced in 1978. As for recent wildcard-round "totals" trends, they've slightly leaned to the "unders" by a 20-15-1 count since 2000.
Following are the pointspread results for wildcard playoff games since 1978 (excluding the 1982 "strike" season, when all 16 playoff teams participated in first-round games).
NFL WILDCARD PLAYOFF GAMES SINCE 1978 CATEGORY VS. POINTS
1-3 pt. dogs... 24-16-2
3 1/2-6 1/2 pt. dogs... 17-15-1
7-pt. or more dogs... 11-12
Home dogs... 11-3
Road dogs... 41-40-3
Margins of victory (98 total games)-21 games have been decided by 1-3 points, 21 games by 4-7 points, 12 games by 8-13 points, and 44 games have been decided by 14 points or more.