There has been all of one college football bracket for a 12-team playoff, and the sports world is already debating whether it’s the right move for four of their conference winners to automatically get a bye in the format. I understand well that the NFL is generally more balanced than college football, but the next few weeks could bring on a similar debate to pro football.

At the moment, the Green Bay Packers hold the sixth seed in the NFL, despite having a 10-4 record. There is a possibility that the Packers could finish the year with a 13-4 record and still only keep that sixth seed — with the reward being a road game against the winner of one of the lesser divisions in the conference. All this just because they happen to play against the Detroit Lions, a 12-2 team, and the Minnesota Vikings, an 11-2 team, in their division.

According to NFL Pro, the teams that beat the Packers have a combined record of 46-6 this season, which is the highest win percentage of any team with four or more losses since the 1929 Frankford Yellow Jackets. Those Yellow Jackets lost once to the 12-0-1 Green Bay Packers, who eventually won the league title that year, and three times to the 13-1-1 New York Giants, who finished second in the NFL.

That’s right, you have to go all the way back to a schedule that included exhibition games against “Clifton Heights Orange & Black” and “Lebanon Battery H” to find better “quality losses” than the 2024 Packers.

According to Sports Illustrated’s Bill Huber, no 12-win team has ever been ranked the sixth seed or lower in a conference at the NFL level. With two layups against the New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears remaining on the Packers’ 2024 schedule, along with a coin toss against the Vikings, there’s a good chance that this Green Bay team will make history.

Huber added that a third-place divisional finish has only won 11 games three times in the last century. The Packers would have to go a lousy 1-2 down the stretch just to be held up next to some of the unluckiest teams of all time, from a seeding standpoint.

Automatically giving division winners the top four seeds in the NFC playoffs has never been much of an issue before, because those things tend to sort themselves out naturally. When the system is fed an odd season like the Packers only being the third seed in the NFC North, though, you have to start questioning methods and seeking alternatives.

Luckily for the NFL, it’s taken decades to finally produce the result that is the 2024 Green Bay season. The big question now is whether or not the league will see this as a big enough problem to attempt to fix moving forward or if it’s rare enough that the machine will keep chugging along with its historical methodology.

If the playoffs were seeded by win percentage, disregarding divisions beyond scheduling purposes, the Packers would be ranked fourth in the NFC right now despite their losses to strong opponents. The NFC West-leading Los Angeles Rams, the NFC South-leading Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seattle Seahawks would then be in a three-way tie for the sixth and seventh seeds in the conference, rather than automatically being gifted two home playoff games.

Will the NFL do anything? Maybe. Do the Packers have a case that their season warrants a bigger reward than being a road team that has to play the NFC’s third seed in the wildcard round? I think so.