When did you realize that this weekend’s Wild Card games really, well… stink? Was it when Justin Herbert threw his fourth interception? When Pittsburgh punted for the fourth straight time to open the game? When Denver hit a three-pointer over and over again?

Thank heavens for the Tampa Bay-Washington Divisional Doink, which ended a streak of four straight ugly football games. Without that, we would have had an unrelenting weekend of terrible professional football…a stark contrast to the two College Football Playoff classics that led to the NFL Playoffs.

This opening round of the NFL playoffs — stop calling it “Super Wild Card Weekend,” the NFL has quietly killed that terrible branding — actually replicated the first round of the CFP in all the wrong ways. In each of the first four games, three of which were completely sold out, the home team prevailed over the visitors without any major problems or drama. All four winners took first-half leads they never wanted to relinquish – sometimes early (Philadelphia, 101 seconds into the game) and sometimes late (Houston, 58 seconds before halftime). At the end of all four games, the commentators were already looking ahead to the next round’s match long before the clock reached zero.

The simple truth about football, both at the college and professional levels, is this: the gap between the elite teams and everyone else is vast and virtually unbridgeable. (And the Chargers’ ability to cut off their own feet remains unmatched.) Only the variance of football in individual games allows unexpected results to occasionally emerge; If the Bills played the Broncos in a best-of-seven, Denver would be lucky to force a Game 6.

The six-game wild card round has variations but tends toward a familiar pattern. As the playoffs have grown to six wild-card weekend games in 2020, the higher seeds tend to win, and by larger and larger margins.

• There will be a maximum of two one-possession games in 2024 if Minnesota and the Rams stay close on Monday night. The higher seed has won four out of five so far.

• In 2023, only one of the opening games was closer than 14 points. (The Lions beat the Rams 24-23.) The higher seed won five of six games.

• There have actually been four one-possession games in 2022, including Jacksonville’s comeback from a 27-0 deficit. The higher seed won four out of six.

• There have been two one-possession games in 2021, and the higher seed won five of six.

• In 2020, when the playoffs began, there were three possession games. The higher seed only won two out of six, but 2020 was a strange year that shouldn’t count for anything anyway.

What does this all mean for the upcoming playoffs? Well, just like adding ice cubes to your beer won’t do much for the taste, adding more teams to the playoffs won’t do anything for the competitive balance of the postseason either. Because let’s remember, you don’t put these teams at the top of the rankings.

Combine the inevitable expansion of the NFL playoffs to 16 teams with the inevitable expansion of the entire league to 18 games, and you can see where we’re headed – more playoff failures, more non-qualifying teams in the postseason.

The argument for expanding the playoffs is clear: more teams = more fans invested in the playoff race = more revenue. But consider how the playoff “race” went this year – by Week 18, there were only three teams left in the race that didn’t make the postseason, and the Falcons, Dolphins and Bengals didn’t exactly spend this season trying to cover yourself with glory only to fail at the last second. There are a lot of bad teams in the NFL every year, and letting two more of them slip into the postseason won’t improve the overall result.

There’s always a chance you’ll reach a wonder destination like Washington-Tampa Bay. But the likelihood is that the Texans’ annual Saturday afternoon slapfight will be the rule, not the unwatchable exception, every Wild Card weekend.