Everything about Nfl Playoffs totally explained
The
National Football League (NFL) playoffs are a
single-elimination tournament held at the end of the 16-game
regular season to determine the NFL champion. Six teams from each of the league's two conferences qualify for the tournament based on regular season records, and a tie-breaking procedure exists in the case of equal records. It ends with the
Super Bowl, the league's championship game.
NFL post-season history can be traced to the first
NFL Championship Game in 1933, though in the early years, qualification for the game was based solely on regular season records. The first true NFL playoff began in 1967, when four teams qualified for the tournament. When the league merged with the
American Football League in 1970, the playoffs expanded to eight teams. The playoffs were expanded to ten teams in 1978 and twelve teams in 1990.
Current playoff system
The 32-team league is divided into two conferences: the
American Football Conference (AFC) and the
National Football Conference (NFC). As of 2002, each conference is 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 16-game regular season. Qualification into the playoffs are as follows:
- The 4 division champions from each conference (the team in each division with the best overall record), which are seeded 1 through 4 based on their overall won-lost-tied record.
- Two wild card qualifiers (those 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 (the league in recent years has also used the term Wild Card Weekend).
The 3rd-seeded division winner hosts the 6th seed wild card, and the 4th seed hosts the 5th. The 1 and the 2 seeds from each conference receive a bye in the first round, which entitles these teams to automatically advance to the second round, the Divisional Playoff games, to face the Wild Card Weekend survivors. Unlike most tournaments, with a predetermined bracket, the second round of the playoffs is 're-seeded'; the top seed always hosts the lowest surviving seed, the second seed hosts the second-lowest. This guarantees each division winner at least one home playoff game
The two surviving teams from the Divisional Playoff games meet in Conference Championship games, with the winners of those contests going on to face one another in the Super Bowl.
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.
Breaking ties
Often, teams will finish a season with identical records. It becomes necessary, therefore, to devise means to
break these ties, either to determine which teams will qualify for the playoffs, or to determine seeding in the playoff tournament. The rules below are applied in order until the tie is broken. If three teams are tied for one playoff spot, the rules are applied only until the first team qualifies. If multiple playoff spots are at stake, the rules are applied in order until the first team qualifies, then the process is started again for the remaining teams.
The 1932 playoff game
In
1932, the
Chicago Bears (6-1-6) and the
Portsmouth Spartans (6-1-4) were tied at the end of the season with the identical winning percentage of .857. (The
Green Bay Packers (10-3-1) had more wins, but a lower winning percentage (.769) as calculated under the rules of the day, which omitted ties). An additional game was therefore needed to determine a champion. It was agreed that the game would be played in
Chicago at
Wrigley Field, but severe winter weather and fear of a low turnout forced the game to be moved indoors to
Chicago Stadium. The game was played under modified rules on a shortened 80-yard dirt field, and the Bears won with a final score of 9-0. As a result of the game, the Bears had the better winning percentage (.875) and won the league title. The loss gave the Spartans a final winning percentage of .750, and moved them to third place behind the Packers. While there's no consensus that this game was a real "championship" game (or even a playoff game), it generated considerable interest and lead to the creation of the official
NFL Championship Game in
1933.
During the
1960s, a third-place game was played in
Miami, called the
Playoff Bowl. It was contested in early January following the
1960-
69 seasons. The NFL officially classifies these ten games (and statistics) as exhibitions, not as playoff games.
AFL playoffs
Since it would eventually merge with the NFL, the
AFL playoff history bears some explanation. For the 1960-68 seasons, the AFL used the two-divisional format identical to the NFL to determine its champion. There was no tie-breaker system in place, so ties atop the Eastern Division final standings in
1963 and Western Division in
1968 necessitated playoff games to determine each division's representative in the championship.
For the
1969 season, a second round was added whereby the each division winner played the
second place team from the other division. The winners of this game met in the AFL Championship Game.
The Super Bowl era
The Super Bowl began as an inter-league championship game between the AFL and NFL. This compromise was the result of pressures the upstart AFL was placing on the older NFL. The success of the rival league would eventually lead to a full merger of the two leagues. Originally, the home teams in the playoffs were decided based on a yearly rotation. The league didn't institute a seeding system for the playoffs until 1975, where the surviving clubs with the higher seeds were made the home teams for each playoff round. Thus, there would be times when the pairing in the Divisional Playoff Round would be the 1 seed vs. the 3 seed and 2 vs. 4.
Following an expansion of the regular season from 14 to 16 games in the
1978 season, the league added one more wild card team for each conference. The two wild card teams played the week before the division winners. The winner of this game played the top seeded division winner as was done from 1970-1977. The league continued to prohibit intra-divisional games in the Divisional Playoffs, but allowed such contests in the Wild Card Round. This ten-team playoff format was used through the 1989 season.
During the strike-shortened
1982 season only nine regular season games were played, and a modified playoff format was instituted. Divisional play was ignored (there were some cases where division rivals had both games wiped out by the strike), and the top eight teams from each conference (based on W-L-T record) were advanced to the playoffs. This was the only year that teams with losing records qualified for the playoffs, the 4-5
Cleveland Browns and the 4-5
Detroit Lions.
For the
1990 season, a third wild card team for each conference was added, expanding the playoffs to twelve teams. The lowest-seeded division winner was then "demoted" to the wild card week. Also, the restrictions on intra-divisional games during the Divisional Playoffs were removed.
[ This format continued until the 2002 expansion and reorganization into eight divisions. In this current format, as explained above, the 4 division winners and 2 wild cards are seeded 1-6, with the top 2 seeds receiving byes, and the highest seed in each round guaranteed to play the lowest seed. Also, records don't always determine the home field advantage, seeds always do. Thus it's possible that a division champion could host a wild card playoff team that has a better win-loss record.][Further Information]
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