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The NFL is an American sports league with a playoff system that culminates in a franchise winning the ultimate prize in football, the Super Bowl. The NFL has 32 teams, with each falling into one of two conferences, AFC or the NFC. Each team competes directly against three other teams in their division.
The qualification for the Playoffs is the number one priority from the very first week. Each team plays a total of 17 games following the addition of an extra inter-conference game.
Following the completion of the regular season, 14 teams will qualify for the playoffs by their records. These teams are the four AFC divisional winners, three AFC wildcards, four NFC divisional winners, and three NFC wildcards.
Now that we've gotten the rudiments out of the way, it's high time we briefly analyze how many wins it takes for a team to make the playoffs.
So essentially, a team must win its division to be assured qualification to the NFL playoffs, and if that's not possible, then a team can qualify through a wildcard berth. Based on their winning records, the top three teams in each conference will qualify for the wildcard slot.
For the sake of our discussion, it is worth noting that to this day, every team that has finished 12–4 or better has made the NFL playoffs in the 12-team format (not the current 14-team format).
Plus, only one 11–5 team has missed the playoffs since it went to 12 teams which happened to be Bill Belichick's 2008 New England Patriots.
As such, even though 14 teams now battle it out for a slot in the Super Bowl, it is next to impossible for a 13-4 or 12-5 team to miss the playoffs in its entirety. But then again, it's the NFL, and crazier things have happened.
Any exceptions to the general norm?
Yes, there are exceptions to the general norm, as stated above when citing the example of the 2008 New England Patriots. It was the only Bill Belichick and Tom Brady team that missed the playoffs since TB12 became the Patriots' undisputed starter. Though he was injured for the vast majority of the season.
Such was an exception in the 16-game and 12-playoff team system. So, you can be sure that with 17 games and 14 teams making the playoffs, there are bound to be more interesting subplots as the years go by.
