What Teams Are In The AFC Conference?

The National Football League, most often referred to in its short form as the NFL, is one of the biggest if not the biggest sports league in America. The NFL is an American football or gridiron football league and its Championship game, the Super Bowl is not only one of the most watched games in the northern continent, but it is also the most anticipated. What makes the NFL’s title game unique and special from the rest of the big leagues such as the NBA, MLB, and NHL, is that the NFL holds one final game where the winner takes it all. Whereas, the other leagues have a best of seven winner, and thus the Super Bowl generates an atmosphere on a whole other level.

As most of the big sporting leagues in the country have different conferences, the NFL is also structured in a similar way. The league consists of two conferences, namely the AFC and the NFC. In this article, we are going to target primarily the AFC conference and the respective teams involved in it.

NFL’s AFC Conference

The AFC which is the American Football Conference is one of the two conferences in the NFL and it consists of 16 different teams. Before the NFL came into existence in 1970, there were two rival football leagues, the National Football League and the American Football League. After the merger took place, the NFL decided to have two separate conferences and thus the AFC came into existence.

For distribution purposes, all ten teams from the AFL along with three teams from the NFL became part of the new AFC and the remaining 13 teams from the NFL went to the new NFC. As the league grew, more teams were added to the league increasing the total from 26 to the current 32.

Teams in the AFC

Although the AFC conference is made up of 16 teams, all of them are further divided into four different divisions. The divisions are very important as all the teams within the same division will play each other twice in one season. The divisions in the AFC are: AFC East, AFC West, AFC North, and the AFC South.

AFC Standings

The regular season in the NFL consists of 18 weeks. Each team plays a total of 17 games in 17 weeks and each team also receives one bye week which is essentially a week for rest. At the end of the regular season, all teams are ranked according to their wins, losses, tie games, and if required tie breakers as only the top seven teams from each conference can advance to the playoffs.

The standings also help to decide which team will earn which seed. One thing to note is that irrespective of the number of wins, all four division winners are always ranked from 1-4 and then the rest of the teams will follow accordingly. The latest NFL standings for the 2022-23 season are as follows:

2022 AFC standings

Legend:

xz* - Clinched Division and Homefield Advantage

xz- Clinched Division

x- Clinched Playoffs