How Many NFL Wild Card Teams vs Playoff Teams

In the middle of playoff season, one question keeps coming up in every chat: how many NFL wild card teams are there, and how is that different from the total playoff field?

Quick answer: Each NFL conference sends seven playoff teams — four division winners and three wild cards — for a total of 14 postseason teams. In this guide from FlagOh, you’ll get the numbers, a clean table you can screenshot, and the Wild Card Weekend math—plus a simple way to understand how ties get sorted late in the season.

The Numbers You Actually Need First

If you found this page by typing NFL how many wild card teams, you’re in the right place. The fastest way to get unconfused is to lock in three numbers and one definition.

How Many NFL Wild Card Teams Are There?

Each conference — the AFC and NFC — includes three wild card spots, for a total of six wild card teams in the entire NFL postseason.

How Many Teams Make the NFL Playoffs?

Since the 2020 playoff expansion, the NFL postseason features 14 teams total — seven from each conference. This is the modern structure most fans recognize today: a single conference bracket with seven slots, where the bottom three slots go to wild cards.

Wild Cards vs Division Winners Explained

Every playoff team has earned a postseason spot, but wild cards are the ones that get in without winning their division title. In other words, wild cards are not a separate tournament—they’re simply the non-division winners who still earned one of the remaining playoff berths.

Wild Cards vs Playoff Teams

If playoff graphics ever make you pause, this table is the quickest reference. It shows the AFC and NFC structure side by side, so you can see exactly where wild cards fit and why the seed numbers tell the real story. If you want a quick reference you can screenshot and share, this table is how we keep the format simple at FlagOh.

AFC and NFC Counts at a Glance 

Breakdown	Division Winners	Wild Cards	Total Playoff Teams	Wild Card Seeds
AFC	4	3	7	5–7
NFC	4	3	7	5–7
Total	8	6	14	—

Every playoff team has earned a postseason spot, but wild cards are the ones that get in without winning their division title.

Who Qualifies as a Wild Card Team

A team counts as a wild card only if it reaches the playoffs without winning its division. A division winner never counts as a wild card, even if its record is worse than a wild card team’s record. That can feel counterintuitive when you scan standings by record, but it’s a feature of the system: division titles earn guaranteed placement, and wild cards fill the remaining slots.

Seed Numbers That Explain Everything

In the easiest shorthand, seeds 1–4 are division champions, and seeds 5–7 are wild cards. Once you anchor on that, you stop mixing up record alone with seeding, which is where most confusion starts.

Wild Card Weekend Math 

Wild Card Weekend gets simple once you know the format: with seven playoff teams per conference, only the #1 seed earns a first-round bye. That leaves 12 teams playing across six total games, with matchups set by seed.

First-Round Matchups by Seed

• #2 hosts #7
• #3 hosts #6
• #4 hosts #5

If your team is the #6 seed, it’s a wild card by definition—and it opens on the road against the #3 seed. Seeds aren’t a suggestion; they’re the map of who you play and where you start.

How Teams Earn a Wild Card Spot 

The wild card race feels messy because the last spots often come down to small edges. This section shows the simple rule that fills those seats, then explains how ties are resolved so the standings make sense when records match.

The Simple Rule Behind Wild Card Spots

First, the conference places its four division winners into the playoff field. Once the four division champions are locked in, the next three best teams by record — regardless of division — claim the wild card spots.

How Ties Are Broken in the Standings

The reason fans get frustrated with tiebreakers is that they expect one obvious stat to decide everything. In reality, the NFL follows a fixed order that prioritizes direct results first, then conference context, and only later strength metrics. In most two-team wild-card ties, it starts with head-to-head (if applicable), then conference record, then common games (minimum of four), and only after that moves to measures like strength of victory and strength of schedule. The key takeaway isn’t memorizing every step—it’s knowing the order is consistent, so standings aren’t arbitrary even when they look surprising.

A Simple Way to Track the Week 18 Bubble

If you want to track the bubble cleanly, start by locking division winners so the 1–4 seed bucket is set. Then look at the remaining teams by record and identify actual ties. Once you know who’s tied with whom, you can check the relevant comparison layer instead of guessing from a TV ticker that only shows part of the story.

What to Remember Before You Go

Before you close this tab, it helps to lock in the one-line recap and a few fast answers you can reuse in conversations. This final section keeps it simple so you can explain the format without backtracking.

The Numbers to Remember

Here’s the whole format in one line: each conference sends 7 playoff teams, made up of 4 division winners and 3 wild cards, and those wild cards are seeds 5–7. If you’ve watched the league a long time and it feels “new,” that’s because the format has changed over time, so longtime fans may remember a different wild-card count.

Common Questions Fans Ask

How many NFL wild-card teams are there?
Six total — three in each conference.

How many total teams make the NFL playoffs?
Fourteen — seven from the AFC and seven from the NFC.

What’s the difference between wild card teams and playoff teams?
Wild card teams are playoff teams that did not win their division; playoff teams include both division winners and wild cards.

What seeds are the wild card teams?
Seeds 5, 6, and 7 in each conference.

How many games are in Wild Card Weekend?
Six games total, because 12 teams play while the two #1 seeds have byes.

Do wild-card teams ever get a first-round bye?
No. Only the #1 seed in each conference gets one.

Can a wild-card team host a playoff game?
Not in Round 1. Higher seeds always host.

How do teams qualify for a wild-card spot?
They qualify by having one of the best remaining records in the conference after division winners are placed.

Did the NFL always have three wild cards per conference?
No. The number of wild cards has changed with playoff format changes over time.

If you’re hosting Wild Card Weekend, a simple way to make the day feel legit is a Playoff Porch Flag that stays readable from the street and holds its shape in the wind. Now that you know how many NFL wild card teams make it in, you can match the moment with a clean, durable design—browse playoff-season options at FlagOh.