Standby for everything that you need to know about how the NFL season works.
There are 32 NFL teams.
The league is split up into two conferences of 16 teams each, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Each of these conferences is split up into 4 divisions, north, south, east and west.
All teams play a 16 game regular season which lasts 17 weeks due to the inclusion of a bye week for each team.
Their schedule is broken up as follows:
- Teams play the other 3 teams in their division twice, once at home and once away.
- They play the 4 teams from another division within their conference (the division that they play rotates every year), 2 of these are home games and 2 away games.
- They also play 4 teams from a division in the other conference (the division rotates every year), again 2 games at home and 2 away.
- Finally they play 2 other teams from within their conference that finished in the same position as them in their own division the previous season.
Once the regular season has finished 12 teams qualify for the playoffs, 6 from each conference. The playoffs are broken up into the AFC championship and the NFC championship. The winner of the AFC will play the winner of the NFC in the Super Bowl to decide who are the NFL champions.
Each division winner qualifies for the playoffs plus 2 other teams (called the wildcards) with the best records in their conference apart from the division winners.
Below you can see an example from last season's playoffs.
Understanding all of this is not necessary to enjoy watching the NFL this season, you'll pick most of it up along the way.
-In the next installment of the Balls.ie NFL Crash Course we'll let you know the top 5 stories that you need to be aware of going into the new season.
Previously
- Why you become an NFL fan.
- The basics of the game explained.
