{"id":1634,"date":"2025-04-26T14:35:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T14:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1634\/"},"modified":"2025-04-26T14:35:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T14:35:53","slug":"schedule-bracket-for-nfl-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1634\/","title":{"rendered":"Schedule, bracket for NFL playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

NFL Overreactions Week 17<\/p>\n

Sports Seriously’s Mackenzie Salmon breaks down this weeks NFL matchups.<\/p>\n

Sports Seriously<\/p>\n

The most thrilling part of the NFL<\/a> season is nearly here. The NFL playoffs<\/a> are just a week away as the best teams in both conferences contend for this year’s Super Bowl title<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Starting in the 2020-21 playoffs, the NFL expanded to a 14-team playoff field from the prior 12-team format. To begin Super Wild Card Weekend<\/a>, we go from 32 teams to 14. Here’s everything you need to know about the NFL playoff format this season:<\/p>\n

NFL playoff format<\/p>\n

The NFL playoff format is a single-elimination tournament of seven teams in the AFC and NFC, including:<\/p>\n

Four division winners (South, North, East, and West)Three wild card teams (best remaining teams by record)<\/p>\n

The division winner with the best record receives the No. 1 seed in their conference, plays their playoff games at home, and gets a bye in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

The playoffs have four rounds: the wild card round, divisional round, conference championship games, and the Super Bowl. There is an extra week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n

Wild card round<\/p>\n

No. 1 seed has a byeNo. 2 seed hosts No. 7 seedNo. 3 seed hosts No. 6 seedNo. 4 seed hosts No. 5 seed<\/p>\n

Divisional round<\/p>\n

The No. 1 seed hosts the lowest remaining seed.The second-highest remaining seed hosts the second-lowest remaining seed.<\/p>\n

Conference championship game<\/p>\n

Divisional round winners (higher seed hosts)<\/p>\n

Super Bowl<\/p>\n

Conference championship winners play at a neutral site.This year’s Super Bowl will be played at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.When do the NFL playoffs start?<\/p>\n

The NFL playoffs kick off on Saturday, Jan. 11, at 1 p.m. ET for the first game of the wild-card round.<\/p>\n

Here’s how the full schedule breaks down for the 2024-25 NFL playoffs.<\/p>\n

Wild card round: Jan. 11-13, 2025Divisional round: Jan. 18-19, 2025Conference championship: Jan. 26, 2025Super Bowl: Feb. 9, 2025<\/p>\n

AFC<\/p>\n

NFC<\/p>\n

These are the current wild card matchups, given the state of the playoff picture:<\/p>\n

AFC wild card<\/p>\n

No. 2 Buffalo Bills vs. No. 7 Denver BroncosNo. 3 Baltimore Ravens vs. No. 6 Pittsburgh SteelersNo. 4 Houston Texans vs. No. 5 Los Angeles Chargers<\/p>\n

NFC wild card<\/p>\n

No. 2 Philadelphia Eagles vs. No. 7 Green Bay PackersNo. 3 Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. No. 6 Washington CommandersNo. 4 Los Angeles Rams vs. No. 5 Minnesota Vikings<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NFL Overreactions Week 17 Sports Seriously’s Mackenzie Salmon breaks down this weeks NFL matchups. Sports Seriously The most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[247,265,825,324,860,864,876,7,866,677,679,248,826,88,854,873,6,84,907,245,537,359,530,818,865,817,829,9,266,819,678,776],"class_list":{"0":"post-1634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-playoffs","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-american-football-conference","11":"tag-conference","12":"tag-east","13":"tag-exclude","14":"tag-exclude-smart-fronts","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-fronts","17":"tag-modular","18":"tag-modular-story","19":"tag-national","20":"tag-national-football-conference","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-nfc","23":"tag-nfc-east","24":"tag-nfl","25":"tag-nfl-playoffs","26":"tag-now","27":"tag-overall","28":"tag-overall-positive","29":"tag-playoffs","30":"tag-positive","31":"tag-scores","32":"tag-smart","33":"tag-sport","34":"tag-sport-scores-u0026-statistics","35":"tag-sports","36":"tag-sports-news","37":"tag-statistics","38":"tag-story","39":"tag-u0026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114404772043400094","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}