National Football League Playoffs - Current Playoff System

Current Playoff System

The 32-team league is divided into two conferences: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC), each of which has 16 teams. Since 2002, each conference has been further divided into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. The tournament brackets are made up of six teams from each of the league's two conferences, following the end of the regular season. Qualification into the playoffs works as follows:

• The 4 division champions from each conference (the team in each division with the best record), which are seeded 1 through 4 based on their overall won-lost-tied record.
• Two wild card qualifiers from each conference (the non division-champions with the conference's best winning percentages), which are seeded 5 and 6.

The first round of the playoffs is dubbed the Wild Card Playoffs (or Wild Card Weekend). In this round, the third-seeded division winner hosts the sixth seed wild card, and the fourth seed hosts the fifth. There are no restrictions regarding teams from the same division matching up in any round. The 1 and 2 seeds from each conference receive a bye in the first round, which entitles these teams to automatic advancement to the second round, the Divisional Playoffs, where they face the Wild Card Weekend survivors. The NFL does not use a fixed bracket playoff system. The number 1 seed will host the lowest surviving seed from the first round (seed 4, 5 or 6), while the number 2 seed will play the other team (seed 3, 4 or 5). The two surviving teams from each conference's Divisional Playoff games then meet in the respective AFC and NFC Conference Championship games (hosted by the higher seed), with the winners of those contests going on to face one another in the Super Bowl. Only twice since 1990 has neither a number one-seeded team nor a number two-seeded team hosted a conference championship game (in the 2006 AFC Championship the #3 seeded Indianapolis Colts hosted the #4 seeded New England Patriots with the Colts winning 38–34 and the 2008 NFC Championship the #4 seeded Arizona Cardinals hosting the #6 seeded Philadelphia Eagles with the Cardinals winning 32–25).

If teams are tied (having the same regular season won-lost-tied record), the playoff seeding is determined by a set of tie-breaking rules.

One potential disadvantage is that the two teams with the best records in a conference could play each other before the conference championship if they are in the same division. The better team would be seeded #1, while the lesser team would be seeded #5 as the top wild card team, and as shown in the diagram, it is possible for the #1 division winner to play the top wild card team in the divisional round. (See also the "Modification proposals" section below.)

The New York Giants and New York Jets have shared the same home stadium since 1984 (first Giants Stadium from 1984 to 2009, and now MetLife Stadium since 2010). Thus, if both teams need to host playoff games on the same weekend, they are always required to play on separate days, even during the Conference Championship round. The only time such a scheduling conflict has occurred was during Wild Card Weekend in 1985, when only 10 teams qualified for the postseason and there were only two Wild Card games (See the "History" section below): Instead of playing both Wild Card games on the same day, as that was the case when the 10-team system was used from 1978 to 1989, the New England Patriots defeated the Jets, 26–14, on Saturday, December 28, before the Giants beat the San Francisco 49ers, 17–3, on the following day.