NFL Postseason - 2009 Season

The NFL playoffs have arrived - and it is to my great thanks that my team is among the 12 still alive. It's been an interesting year in the NFL - unlike many other years, so few teams have seemed to step forth as contenders. This year focus has seemingly been on the Colts, Saints, and Vikings; flying under the radar have been the Chargers, Packers, Eagles and Cowboys. Then, there's everyone else. The Broncos jetted out to 6-0 - no one expected that, but certainly most people figured they'd be able to put together 4 more wins of the 10-remaining games. They couldn't. The Cardinals won their relatively weak division at 10-6, meanwhile the Packers finish in second at 11-5. The Patriots win their division in Week 16 with 10 wins and finish the season at 10-6 after losing the last game of the season, and still have the #3 seed in the AFC playoffs; last year they were 11-5 and out of the playoffs. The reigning Super Bowl champions are out of the playoffs all together.

So, what do the Playoffs look like?

12 Playoff TeamsThere are four rounds to the National Football League, or NFL, playoffs wherein each year 12-teams of the 32 in the NFL reach them. There are two conferences of 16-teams each: the National Football Conference (NFC) and the (AFC). The conferences are so named due to the 1970 merger of the National Football League and the American Football League into the league we know as the NFL.

4 Division Champions, 2 Wild Cards. Each of the conferences' 4-divisions has a champion and that champion is the division representative in the playoffs. There are two wild card teams as well: these 2-teams are the two which were the best of the teams that did not win a division.

Seedings. Within each conference, the two top teams (or "seeds") are granted a "playoff bye" - meaning they do not play the first week of the playoffs. This gives them an extra week to rest and get healthy while the other teams play off to determine which will advance. The conference seedings determine which teams play at home - the team with the highest seeding in a match up, plays at home.

This years' playoff teams and their seedings:

American Football Conference

1. Indianapolis Colts (14-2)

2. San Diego Chargers (13-3)

3. New England Patriots (10-6)

4. Cincinnati Bengals (10-6)

5. New York Jets (9-7)

6. Baltimore Ravens (9-7)

National Football Conference

1. New Orleans Saints (13-3)

2. Minnesota Vikings (12-4)

3. Dallas Cowboys (11-5)

4. Arizona Cardinals (10-6)

5. Green Bay Packers (11-5)

6. Philadelphia Eagles (11-5)

As it happens, the Steelers - Champions of the last Super Bowl - finished at 9-7 and are out of the playoffs yet two teams in the AFC - the Jets and Ravens - finished with the same record, and even more curious to the casual observer is that both the Packers and Eagles finished the season with a better record than the Cardinals, and yet the Cards are seeded higher than either of them.

Due to the fact there are only 16-games in a football season, there is a rather Byzantine tie breaking procedure to determine which team will enter the playoffs either as a division champion or as a wild card if there is a tie in the record: it is an 11-step procedure beginning at head-to-head matchups (games played between the clubs) and ending with a coin flip. In the case of the 2009 NFC, the Cardinals won a relatively weak division and earned a higher seed than arguably better teams. The Steelers fell victim to the NFL tiebreaking procedures: when there is a three-team tie, the first tie-breaker is to leave only ONE team from each division before moving on to any other tiebreakers. In their case, the Ravens would have had to lose their last game of the season to eliminate them from Wild Card consideration.

WILD CARD WEEKEND

Baltimore (#6) at New England (#3)

NY Jets (#5) at Cincinnati (#4)

Philadelphia (#6) at Dallas (#3)

Green Bay (#5) at Arizona (#4)

As it happens, of the 4 Wild Card games there are 3 encores of Week 17 matchups: The Jets against Cincinnati - in a home and home matchup as Week 17 was in the Meadowlands, Cincinnati hosts the playoff game - Green Bay at Arizona and Philadelphia at Dallas.

The season finale featured two of the higher seeds losing in fairly dramatic fashion: The Jets crushed the Bengals 37-0, the Packers handed the Cardinals a 33-7 loss. In the one game of which the higher seed did not lose, Philadelphia, presumably fighting for the second seed in the playoffs - AND the first round bye week that would accompany it - dropped from potentially #2 to #6 in their 24-0 loss to the Cowboys.

The following weekend in the Divisional round of the playoffs, the #1 seeds will play the lowest remaining seed, the #2 seeds will play the highest remaining seed.
Best wishes to the playoff teams - they have earned the right to play in the most exciting month in sports and arguably the largest stage in all of sports, and compete for the right to participate in certainly the largest single sporting event - the Super Bowl in Miami, on February 7, 2010.