- Fourteen of the NFL's 32 teams reach the playoffs: seven from each conference.
- Each conference sends its four division winners and three wild cards.
- The top seed in each conference gets the first weekend off and plays at home until the Super Bowl.
- Every game is win or go home. The last two teams meet in the Super Bowl.
The NFL regular season is short. Each team plays 17 games, and a single loss in December can cost a place in January.
Then the playoffs begin, and the margin for error disappears completely. There are no series and no second games. Lose once and the season is over.
How the league is built
The 32 teams are split into two conferences, the AFC and the NFC. Each conference has 16 teams in four divisions: East, North, South and West. Each division has four teams.
The two conferences run separate playoffs. An AFC team cannot meet an NFC team until the very last game.
Who gets in
Seven teams qualify from each conference.
The first four places go to the division winners. Finish first in your division and you are in, whatever your record.
The other three places are the wild cards. They go to the three teams with the best records among everyone who did not win a division.
How the seeds are set
| Seed | Who | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Division winner with the best record | First weekend off, and every game at home |
| 2, 3, 4 | The other division winners, in order of record | A home game in the first round |
| 5, 6, 7 | The wild cards, in order of record | A place in the bracket, on the road |
One detail causes an argument every year. A division winner is always seeded above a wild card, even when the wild card has the better record. A team that wins a weak division at 9-8 can host a team that went 12-5.
The four rounds
| Round | Games in each conference |
|---|---|
| Wild Card | Three: seed 2 hosts 7, seed 3 hosts 6, seed 4 hosts 5 |
| Divisional | Two: the top seed joins and plays the lowest seed left |
| Conference Championship | One: the winner is conference champion |
| Super Bowl | AFC champion against NFC champion |
The Wild Card round has six games in all, spread over three days. The higher seed is always at home until the Super Bowl, which is played in a stadium chosen years in advance.
There is no fixed bracket
In many tournaments you can trace a team's path from the first day. Not here. After the first round the matchups are set again.
The top seed always plays the lowest seed still alive. So if the seventh seed pulls off an upset, its reward is a trip to face the best team in the conference.
One bad afternoon ends a season. That is the whole idea.
When two teams have the same record
With only 17 games, ties in the standings are common. The league works through a list to separate teams.
For two teams in the same division it starts with the games they played against each other. Next comes their record inside the division, then their record against opponents they both faced, then their record inside the conference. The list goes on for a long way, and it almost never reaches the end.
When it all happens
The regular season ends in early January. The playoffs fill the rest of the month, one round each weekend.
The Super Bowl follows in February. The next one, Super Bowl LXI, is set for February 14, 2027, at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles.
How it got to 14 teams
From 1990 to 2019 the playoffs had 12 teams, and the top two seeds in each conference got the first weekend off.
In the 2020 season the league added a seventh team in each conference. That left only one week off per conference, and made the top seed more valuable than it had ever been.
If the game itself is new to you, start with football in 10 minutes. To see where the road ends, read Super Bowl wins by team.