Mike Vaccaro First place still matters in baseball — just as it should By Mike Vaccaro Published Sep. 30, 2026, 6:33 p.m. ET Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Junior Caminero (13) celebrates after clinching a playoff berth. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect The NFL has run interference on this for years, long before it became an issue you hear about every day around baseball.
It probably started in 2010, when the Seattle Seahawks not only won the NFC West with a 7-9 record, which not only earned them a home game against the New Orleans Saints, who were 11-5, they actually beat the Saints 41-36, led by a fabled 67-yard touchdown run by Marshawn Lynch which still has to be seen (in its eternal YouTube afterlife) to be believed.
Access the Yankees beat like never before Don’t miss Greg Joyce’s text messages from The Bronx and beyond — he’s giving Sports+ subscribers the inside buzz on the Yankees.
Five times that’s happened in the expanded-playoff era in the NFL, not including the strike-shortened 1982 season, which welcomed 16 of its 28 teams into the postseason tournament and thus permitted the Lions and Browns, both 4-5, to sneak in. Most recently, last year’s 8-9 Panthers gave the 13-4 Rams a scare in Charlotte before falling 34-31.
Every time that has happened — including the 2014 Panthers (7-8-1), 2020 Commanders (7-9) and 2022 Buccaneers (8-9) — there have been howls of protest that a team with a losing record has no business even being in the playoffs, let alone hosting a home game. This year, as bad as the NFC South looks, there is genuine angst that the division champ might only need a 7-10 or even a 6-11 record to squeak in.
