{"id":506429,"date":"2026-01-05T16:03:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T16:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/506429\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T16:03:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T16:03:33","slug":"nfl-playoff-schedule-afc-and-nfc-wild-card-matchups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/506429\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL playoff schedule: AFC and NFC wild-card matchups"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NFL playoff schedule is set, with six first-round matchups kicking off the postseason.<\/p>\n<p>The Pittsburgh Steelers will get an extra day of rest after holding on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6941023\/2026\/01\/04\/ravens-steelers-score-result-takeaways-afc-north-title\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to beat the Baltimore Ravens 26-24 and win the AFC North<\/a> in the final game of the regular season. They will host a Monday night showdown on Jan. 12 against the Houston Texans to close out the wild-card round. That was the last playoff matchup to be finalized.<\/p>\n<p>The Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks will receive byes into the divisional round as the top seeds in the AFC and NFC, respectively, while the rest of the field will play in the wild-card round next Saturday through Monday. Two games are set for Saturday, three for Sunday and one on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>Four divisional-round games will be held the following weekend. The conference championship games will be played on Jan. 25 and Super Bowl LX is scheduled for Feb. 8 at Levi\u2019s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6931898\/2026\/01\/05\/nfl-playoff-chances-matchups-super-bowl-odds\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wild-card matchups<\/a> (all times Eastern):<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-6942491 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/NFL-Playoff-Picture-Final-2.jpg\" alt=\"The NFL playoff picture\" width=\"2437\" height=\"1625\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>\n      The NFL playoff picture is set.<\/p>\n<p>AFC<\/p>\n<p>No. 1 Denver Broncos (14-3), first-round bye<\/p>\n<p>No. 7 Los Angeles Chargers (11-6) at No. 2 New England Patriots (14-3), 8 p.m. Sunday, NBC<\/p>\n<p>No. 6 Buffalo Bills (12-5) at No. 3 Jacksonville Jaguars (13-4), 1 p.m. Sunday, CBS<\/p>\n<p>No. 5 Houston Texans (12-5) at No. 4 Pittsburgh Steelers (10-7), 8 p.m. Monday, ESPN\/ABC<\/p>\n<p>NFC<\/p>\n<p>No. 1 Seattle Seahawks (14-3), first-round bye<\/p>\n<p>No. 7 Green Bay Packers (9-7-1) at No. 2 Chicago Bears (11-6), 8 p.m. Saturday, Amazon Prime<\/p>\n<p>No. 6 San Francisco 49ers (12-5) at No. 3 Philadelphia Eagles (11-6), 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Fox<\/p>\n<p>No. 5 Los Angeles Rams (12-5) at No. 4 Carolina Panthers (8-9), 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Fox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL playoff schedule is set, with six first-round matchups kicking off the postseason. The Pittsburgh Steelers will&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,15492,8047,8124,10364,1081,17249,17251,17255,16072,2328,2304,4,2305,2303,17253,1082,12701,13961,1304,10277],"class_list":["post-506429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-postseason","tag-baseball","tag-buffalo-bills","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-chicago-bears","tag-denver-broncos","tag-green-bay-packers","tag-houston-texans","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-los-angeles-chargers","tag-los-angeles-rams","tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-mlb-postseason","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-philadelphia-eagles","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-seattle-seahawks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115843341360759140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}