How Many Teams Advance to the NFL Playoffs?

Making it to the playoffs with a chance to win the Super Bowl is the goal of every team in the NFL, but how do teams qualify for the postseason? Of the 32 teams that compete in the NFL, 14 advance to the playoffs. Seven teams each qualify from the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). They compete in a single-game elimination competition, and the ultimate winner is declared the NFL champion.

The AFC and the NFC are each split into four divisions with four teams each. The NFL’s eight division winners automatically qualify for the playoffs. Of the remaining 24 teams, the 6 teams (3 from each conference) with the best records in the regular season also qualify.

The teams that advance to the postseason are seeded one through seven in each conference on the basis of their regular-season records. The NFL uses a series of tiebreakers, such as head-to-head results, divisional records, and conference records, to determine seeding and playoff qualification among teams that are tied in terms of wins and losses.

The 14 playoff teams face each other in a single-game elimination tournament consisting of the wild card, divisional, conference championship, and Super Bowl rounds. The top seed from the NFC and AFC each automatically advances to the divisional round.

In the wild card round the second-seeded team in each conference plays the seventh seed, the third seed plays the sixth seed, and the fourth seed plays the fifth seed. The six wild card round winners join the two top seeds in the divisional round. In this round the top seeds from the AFC and NFC face the lowest-seeded remaining team from their respective conferences, while the other two winning teams in each conference also face off.

The winners of the two divisional round games in each conference then play against each other to determine the AFC and NFC champions. The winners of the conference championships face off in the Super Bowl game to crown the NFL championship winner.