Breaking ties in the standings is more difficult that you might think. Complex enough, I think, that I’ll bet there are many leagues where playoff teams aren’t seeded properly. In some cases, I’m thinking that teams that are supposed to be in the playoffs are getting left out.
Deferring to a league provider who’s running a site is a safe way to go. They have tiebreakers that will automatically run, and that’s fine. But keep in mind that some (probably most) of those league providers aren’t breaking ties in the same way that the NFL does.
In our league, we follow the lead of the mother league. We don’t use the exact same system (we don’t have 32 teams and have chosen to move “points scored” up in prominence), but we follow the same principals. And there are steps that a casual league commissioner can easily miss.
Most notable rules to remember:
Break ties inside divisions first
I believe most commissioners have a handle on this one. If there are three 7-7 teams in contention for a wild-card spot, with two from one division and the other from a different division, the tie inside the division is settled first. Determine which team advances from that division, then separately break the tie with the other 7-7 team.
But more notably …
”Only one club advances to the playoffs in any tie-breaking step. Remaining clubs revert to the first step of the applicable division or Wild Card tie-breakers.”
While that’s a mouthful, it’s important. And to underscore, let me trot out a real-life example, from the 1995 NFC West. In that season, the Rams, Panthers and Saints all finished with 7-9 records. The Rams went 3-1 in the head-to-head games involving these teams, while the Saints went 2-2 and the Panthers went 1-3. How would you break that tie?
Waits patiently for reader to respond.
For starters, note that division records aren’t involved. No weight is given (at this stage) to how these teams performed in their other division games (against the 49ers and Falcons). Not the main point I’m trying to wait, but let’s toss that onto the pile.
The Rams, with that 3-1 record against the other two teams, wins this tiebreaker. That makes sense. But that’s where it starts to get tricky.
Many commissioners (or league providers) would pencil in the Saints next (with a 2-2 record being better than a 1-3 record). But that’s not the case. That’s not how the NFL would break such a tie.
The correct route is instead to start the tie-breaking process over. So now we’re looking at a different, new tie between the Saints and Panthers, and those teams went 1-1 against each other. In this case, Carolina finished with a better conference record than New Orleans, so it finished higher in the standings (despite finishing with a lesser head-to-head record in the initial three-was tie).
Many times over the years, there have been three-way ties in standings, and the league explains them all in its Record and Fact Book. In all cases, one team is removed from the process; at that point, everything is reset, with the tie-breaking process starting over.
Something to keep in mind, should your league have a three-way tie this year.
—Ian Allan