SI’s Peter King: ‘More likely than not,’ NFL will expand to 14 playoff teams for the 2015 season

The idea of expanding the playoffs from 12 teams to 14 teams has been thrown around for a while, though there weren’t any reports that the plan was actually moving forward. Sports Illustrated’s Peter King is now writing in his Monday Morning Quarterback column that he hears it is coming, and it could be coming as early as the 2015 season.

"I’m hearing it’s probably a matter of when, not if. More likely than not, the league will add two playoff teams in time for the 2015 season, meaning 14 playoff teams (instead of the current 12) out of 32. I’m also hearing the league would be inclined toward one team in each conference getting a first-week bye in the postseason. That would mean matchups of two versus seven seeds, three versus six, and four versus five in the wild-card round. This, of course, would mean six wild-card games instead of four, with at least one of them likely moving to Monday night."

Of course the Monday night game will be argued as a competitive disadvantage for teams having to rest and prepare for the following week on short notice, but every NFL team and player should be accustomed to that with regular Monday night games during the season.