Updated Jan. 7, 2026, 6:08 p.m. ET
The 2026 NFL Playoff field is set. We know where all 14 teams will start their run to Super Bowl 60. We don’t know where it will end — just that a dozen franchises will fall short of their goal of making it to Santa Clara for the biggest game of the year.
Some teams will have a smoother road to follow than others. The Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos earned a well-deserved week off and homefield advantage through their respective sides of the bracket by taking the top seeds in each conference. The Green Bay Packers and Los Angeles Chargers, on the other hand, are three road wins away from even getting to see the Lombardi Trophy in person.
Who’s got it the easiest? Whose playoff schedule is the hardest? That’s what we’re gonna find out.
Let’s start with the softest paths to the Super Bowl in each conference. And because the obvious answer is “the team that got the bye,” let’s exclude the Seahawks and Broncos.
The Rams missed out on a bye by giving up one of 2025’s least likely comebacks in a Week 16 loss to the Seahawks. Their punishment? A trip to face the only team in this year’s playoff field with a losing record and a point differential roughly on par with the Miami Dolphins. Los Angeles gets to face the league’s 22nd-ranked defense and an offense led by Bryce Young. Young, despite his improvements, failed to crack the top 25 among starters when it came to:
Passing yards per game (28th)Passer rating (26th)QBR (26th)EPA per dropback (26th)
and ranked 25th in interception rate. That is balm for a burned defense. Sure, the Rams had a six-game winning streak snapped in Charlotte as a 10-point favorite this fall, but that was on a sloppy, rainy day that provided head coach Sean McVay a blueprint of what not to do in a game that matters.
Next up, if all the top seeds win in Wild Card weekend, would be a game against the Seahawks — a team the Rams split their season series against thanks to a late implosion in that aforementioned come-from-ahead less. LA would face off against Sam Darnold, who has faded down the stretch in each of his last two otherwise remarkable seasons.
The NFC title game could feature a showdown against a Niners team the Rams beat by 16 on the road (but lost to in overtime at home) or against Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears. Williams excels against the blitz but struggles with pressure generated by a four-man front. Los Angeles has a top-five pressure rate and a bottom-four blitz rate. It should be able to contain the Bears’ late-game surges.
Easiest in the AFC: New England Patriots
The Patriots have the top non-bye seed in the AFC. Week 18 delivered them from an early rematch with a Buffalo Bills team that beat them in Gillette Stadium four weeks earlier, erasing a 21-0 deficit in the process.
Instead, they get to face Justin Herbert, author of one of the most crushing postseason defeats in Los Angeles Chargers history (a franchise well versed in them). Los Angeles is a different team than the one that allowed Jacksonville to rally back from a 27-0 deficit in 2023, but Justin Herbert, 0-2 in the playoffs, remains.
Herbert is better than his record suggests and is bolstered by a dominant defense. But he lost last year’s postseason opener thanks in part to a Houston pass rush that pressured him on one-third of his dropbacks. The Patriots have generated pressure on 35 percent of passing plays this winter and have Milton Williams back in the lineup to create chaos from the middle of the line. So when LA’s backup tackles collapse, Herbert — more pressured in 2025 than ever in his career — won’t be able to step up in the pocket and create magic.
Next likely comes a date in Foxborough with the Jaguars, Steelers or Bills. Any would be a tough out, but New England has handled Buffalo before. The Steelers have a one-man receiving corps that plays nicely into Christian Gonzalez’s presence on the boundary. Jacksonville, as good as its been, is prone to glitching. So is the Denver offense with Bo Nix, which leaves the possibility of a throwback to the Tom Brady days and a home game with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.
Honorable mention here belongs to those Jaguars, who are riding an eight-game win streak and get to face a Buffalo Bills team that’s been uneven throughout 2025 and has few reliable targets to offer Josh Allen. But they still have Josh Allen, which makes their Wild Card matchup at least 40 percent terrifying.
Now let’s take a look at the teams with the hardest paths to Super Bowl 60.
Toughest in the NFC: Green Bay Packers
The Packers came into Week 18 knowing they were set to face a team against whom they’d already lost. Thus, we were subjected to Clayton Tune and the worst up-the-middle run in modern NFL history.
The good news was they managed to avoid a date with the Philadelphia Eagles, who they have not beaten in the Jordan Love era (0-4 if you count his 2022 play in relief of Aaron Rodgers). The bad news is they have to face the Bears, an arch rival in search of their first playoff win since 2010 and eager to upend the franchise that’s embarrassed them for the bulk of the last three decades.
Green Bay split the season series with Chicago but gave up a 10-point lead in the final two minutes at Soldier Field in a game that effectively decided the NFC North champion in Week 16. Jordan Love will be back at full strength after missing most of that matchup with a head injury. Micah Parsons will not, due to a torn ACL. That’s a problem.
As previously mentioned, Williams’ passer rating jumps from 83.0 to 104.5 when biltzed. He’s also significantly worse when pressured, which suggests he’s identifying blitzes, finding open spaces and making quick decisions for easy gains. Without Parsons as a phantom able to crash the pocket from anywhere, the Packer defense has struggled to consistently generate pressure; in their last three games their pressure rate has fluctuated from 40 to 24 to 44 percent.
If the Packers start sending extra pass rushers on third down, Williams is equipped to handle it. Next up would be the Seattle Seahawks. While we touched on Darnold’s late-season struggles, it’s also worth noting he’s *also* stable against the blitz (his expected points added per dropback rise from 0.05 to 0.08). Green Bay knew it needed to generate a pass rush without blitzing to take down the NFC’s best quarterbacks. That’s why they traded two first round picks and Kenny Clark for Parsons.
Tough break. Especially for a team that cannot possibly host a playoff game this January.
Toughest in the AFC: Buffalo Bills
Buffalo is a slight favorite in Jacksonville in the Wild Card, which is a reflection on the Jaguars’ past rather than their current status. The Bills depleted secondary has to take on Trevor Lawrence, winner of eight straight games and the league’s third-best quarterback (behind Drake Maye and Jordan Love) in terms of EPA per dropback in that stretch (24 total touchdowns, six turnovers). In that same span, the Bills’ pass defense has been solid (seventh-best) but its run defense has been awful (29th), giving Jacksonville plenty of leverage should its incredible quarterback sputter.
If the top seeds hold serve aside from the Jags, a date with the Denver Broncos swarming-but-somehow-underwhelming defense awaits. That group only ranks eighth in total defensive efficiency, but has Patrick Surtain II in the secondary to erase whomever gets the call to be Josh Allen’s top target in the Divisional Round. Is Keon Coleman gonna go out there and draw interference flags on Riley Moss? Josh Palmer? Tyrell Shavers?
Allen will have to take matters into his own hands against a defense that’s only allowed 18.3 rushing yards per game to quarterbacks in 2025. Go further down the line in a potential AFC title game and you’ve got an awful run defense matched up against overperforming tailbacks like Rhamondre Stevenson, Jaylen Warren or the Chargers’ young duo of Omarion Hampton and Kimani Vidal.
The Bills can absolutely make it to the Super Bowl because Josh Allen is a Ford F-150 some trickster god made human. But it’s going to require some unheralded players to step up and flesh out his passing game while producing the run stops that force opponents into third-and-long situations. Otherwise, the rest of the AFC is built to poke holes in Buffalo’s latest playoff hopes.