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The National Football League (NFL) playoffs are a single-elimination tournament held after the regular season to determine the NFL champion. Currently, seven teams from each of the league's two conferences qualify for the playoffs. A tie-breaking procedure exists if required. The tournament culminates in the Super Bowl: the league's championship game in which two teams, one from each conference, play each other to become champion of the NFL.
NFL postseason 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. From 1933 to 1966, the NFL postseason generally only consisted of the NFL Championship Game, which pitted the league's two division winners against each other (pending any one-game playoff matches that needed to be held to break ties in the division standings). After 1967, the playoffs were expanded to allow four teams to qualify for the tournament. When the league merged with the American Football League (AFL) in 1970, the playoffs were expanded to eight teams. The playoffs were expanded to ten teams in 1978, twelve in 1990, and fourteen in 2020.
Among the major professional sports leagues in the United States, the NFL postseason is the oldest continuously run playoffs to use a single-elimination tournament in all of its rounds. Major League Baseball (MLB) has traditionally used "best-of" series formats, first holding its Wild Card postseason round in 2012. Major League Soccer (MLS) did not begin to use a full single-elimination tournament until 2019. Both the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) continue to use "best-of" series formats.
Sport
American football
Founded 1933
No. of teams 14
Most recent
champion(s) Tampa Bay Buccaneers
(2nd title)
Most titles Green Bay Packers
(13 titles)
TV partner(s) CBS
Fox
NBC
ESPN/ABC
