Your Basic Guideline to the NFL Playoffs

The NFL Playoff season begins Saturday as football fans sit on the edge of our seats patiently awaiting teams to drop off and rise up to the ultimate goal: the Super Bowl. For those of you unaware on how the playoffs work, here’s a basic guideline. So grab your notebook and start jotting!

Let’s start with the 32 NFL teams being broken up into two conferences: the AFC (American Football Conference) and the NFC (National Football Conference). Each conference has 16 teams and is divided into four divisions; North, South, East and West. Each division is a collection of four teams.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky if you aren’t really familiar with football and the importance of the regular season. Try to stay with me. There are already four division winners (two from each conference) that were determined by their regular season record that will automatically make the Divisional playoffs (these teams will NOT play until after the Wildcard games.) But we’ll get to that.

First up is what we know as “Wildcard Weekend”. This is a chance for teams that DID NOT win their division but have the next best records, to become Super Bowl contenders. Only four of these teams will move onto the next round. Saturday’s games will consist of the AFC’s Baltimore Ravens (North) VS Pittsburg Steelers (North) and the NFC’s Arizona Cardinals (West) VS the North Carolina Panthers (South). Sunday will end the weekend with the AFC’s Cincinnati Bengals (North) VS the Indianapolis Colts (South) and the NFC’s Detroit Lions (North) VS the Dallas Cowboys (East).

The four Wildcard winners will move forward to the Divisional Playoffs to play against the two best divisional teams in their respected conferences. Remember, these are those four teams I mentioned earlier that had the best records in their divisions and conference overall. The New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos will represent the AFC (East & West) with the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers for the NFC (West & North).

Whoever wins the Divisional Playoffs, will proceed to the following week’s Conference Championship games (two from each conference). The two conference champs (one from each conference) will then face each other in the Super Bowl for a chance to be named the year’s best NFL team, receive the Vince Lombardi trophy and given custom championship rings worth up to a quarter of a million dollars.

So after 17 long and attentive weeks, we fans will continue with our crazy rituals and prayer circles in hopes that our favorite team will be crowned World Champions or at the very least, our rival teams will soon fall, meeting the end of their season until 2015. Now you can actually follow the most important games of the season and even impress a few folks along the way.