NFL Playoff Rules & Regulations

The National Football League (NFL) postseason consists of six teams from each of the two conferences -- four division winners and two wild-card teams. The wild-card teams are the two teams with the best records among non-division winners. As of 2010, the NFL has modified the overtime playoff rules to increase the chances that each team will receive at least one possession on offense.

  1. Team Selection and Seeding

    • Twelve teams in all make the NFL playoffs, six from each conference. The division winner with the best record is seeded first, followed by the division winner with the next best record, and so on. The two wild-card teams are seeded fifth and sixth based on record, so it is possible for a wild-card team to be seeded lower than a division winner with an inferior record. Home field advantage is also determined by seeding, with the higher seeds receiving home field advantage over lower seeds. The tournament then follows a single-elimination bracket structure, with the two top seed from each conference earning first-round byes.

    Tie Breakers

    • Teams may finish the regular season with identical records. If this occurs, a set of tie-breaking steps will be used to determine division and wild-card winners. To break a tie within a division, the first consideration will be head-to-head record, with the team with the better record against the other team being declared the division winner. If the two teams have split regular season games (each team plays other divisional teams twice), overall division record will determine the winner, followed by win percentage against similar opponents, conference record, strength of victories and schedules, combined ranking in points scored and allowed in conference, combined ranking in points scored and allowed overall, net points in common games, net points in all games and net touchdowns. If none of these 11 steps determines a winner, the division champion will be determined by coin toss. Tie breaking procedure for wild-card teams from within the same division works the same. If a tie-breaker is needed for wild-card teams from different divisions, the process is similar, except that the second step (divisional record) is excluded.

    Game Rules

    • Games themselves follow the same set of rules as NFL regular season games, with the notable exception of overtime. In the regular season, overtime possession is determined by a coin flip, and the first team to score wins. In the postseason, however, the rules stipulate that unless the team that receives the ball first (still determined by coin flip) scores a touchdown on its first possession, the other team will get the ball with a chance to win the game, or at least tie. For example, if the first team to receive the ball scores a field goal on its opening possession, they will then kick off to the other team, who will have the chance to tie the score with a field goal, in which case they would kick off and the game would continue. They can also score a touchdown to win the game outright, or fail to score, in which case the team which scored the field goal would win.