Current season, competition or edition: 2023–24 NFL playoffs | |
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| Sport | American football |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1933 |
| No. of teams | 14 |
| Most recent champion(s) | Kansas City Chiefs (4th title) |
| Most titles | Green Bay Packers (13 titles)[A] |
| TV partner(s) |
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The National Football League (NFL) playoffs is the annual single-elimination tournament held to determine the league champion. The four-round tournament is held after the league's regular season. Since the 2020 season, seven teams from each of the league's two conferences qualify for the playoffs based on regular season winning percentage, with a tie-breaking procedure if required. The top team in each conference receives a first-round bye, automatically advancing to the next round. The tournament culminates in the Super Bowl, the league's championship game, competed between teams from each conference.
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). In 1967, the playoffs were expanded to four teams (division winners). When the league completed its merger with the American Football League (AFL) in 1970, the playoffs were expanded to eight teams, which increased to ten in 1978, twelve in 1990, and fourteen in 2020.
Among the four major professional sports leagues in the United States, the NFL postseason is the only one to use a single-elimination tournament in all of its rounds. Major League Baseball (MLB) has traditionally used "best-of" series formats, though its Wild Card postseason round, initiated in 2012, was a single game until 2022 when it was replaced with a best-of-three series. Both the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) continue to use "best-of" series formats.
- ^ "NFL Champions 1920–2018". ProFootballHOF.com. NFL Enterprises, LLC. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
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