I've heard of 11 or 12 win teams missing the playoffs, but this is just ridiculous!

https://mfn8.myfootballnow.com/

New Jersey missed the playoffs = https://mfn8.myfootballnow.com/team/view/8

Well only way that you wont have 11 , 12 or 13 win teams not missing the playoffs is instead of the current format you let the best 6 teams regardless of division go to the playoffs

As it stands you have these teams making the playoffs


Kansas City (15-1)
San Diego (13-3)
Denver (13-3)
Miami (13-3)
Pittsburgh (8-8)
Indianapolis (9-7)

But if you changed it to best 6 record wise regardless of division

you would have this group making the playoffs instead of current format

KC (15-1)
San Diego (13-3)
Denver (13-3)
Miami (13-3)
New Jersey (13-3)
either Indianapolis (9-7) or New England (9-7)

Even though it wont change much for MFN 8

if you have something like i said earlier in place Custom 64 Conference 1 would be different

Custom 64 = https://cust64.myfootballnow.com/

here are the teams that made the playoffs : Denver (15-1) , Texas Hippie Coalition (13-3) . Indianapolis ( 12-4 ) , Las Vegas ( 11-4-1 ) , New York City (7-9) and Los Angeles (6-10)


Now if you were to allow the 6 best teams record wise make it : Denver (15-1) , Texas Hippie Coalition (13-3) . Indianapolis ( 12-4 ) , Las Vegas ( 11-4-1 ) , Phoenix ( 11- 5 ) and Baltimore (9-6-1)

Basically you would have 2 better teams going to the playoffs and that have better .500 records or better records than the 2 undeserving teams that are 7-9 and 6-10.

I'm well aware of the difference between division winners and teams that are better but in tougher divisions. It is just interesting to see a 13 win team miss the playoffs...

Btw the scores combined for both NYC and LA are

71 points given up (46 for LA to Indianapolis and 25 for NYC to Las Vegas)
41 points scored ( 22 for NYC scored on Las Vegas and 19 for LA scored on Indianapolis )

30 points they lost by combined

With that i think really Phoenix and Baltimore could have played better than New York City and Los Angeles did .

What was the tiebreaker used to separate the teams? From what I can see, the overall records, and the conference records were the same.

That is REALLY unlucky.

3-way tiebreakers get pretty unintuitive by the NFL formula, which is used here.

We did even better than this in MFN-6.

All four teams went 11 or 12 wins.

MFN 6 = https://mfn6.myfootballnow.com/

scroll to 2026 regular season

Cleveland 14-2
Baltimore 12-4
Cincinnati 12-4
Pittsburgh 12-4