Added football playoff stuff)

content/posts/how-football-playoffs-work.md

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+---
+title: How Football Playoffs Work
+draft: false
+date: 2024-11-19T07:00:00
+author:
+  - EliteMasterEric
+  - mia
+description: (and more!)
+categories:
+  - sports
+tags:
+  - nfl
+  - for-fun
+  - american-football
+---
+
+_This is basically an edited discord message from my friend [EliteMasterEric](https://www.elitemastereric.com/). Go check out his site at the link!_
+
+The NFL's 32 teams are split into two conferences, the NFC and AFC. That makes each conference 16 teams, with 4 divisions each. These divisions are always the same 4 teams, so for example, the NFC north is always the Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings, and 
+Green Bay Packers.
+
+During the regular NFL season, each team plays 17 games over the course of 18 weeks (fun fact, that's a total of 272 games!). The bye weeks are redistributed in a semi-arbitrary way. This year (the 2024 season), The Detroit Lions had their bye week in Week 5. 
+
+After the 18-week season ends, the rankings are determined, placing each of the division leaders 1-4 in their conference, then adding in the top 3 teams by overall record in each conference (known as wild-card teams), for a total of 7 teams per conference.
+
+If a team isn't a divisional leader, they have to be in the top 3 out of the 12 other teams in their conference to move on, so getting to the top of the division is key, and thus games against teams in your division are more important (since your win also pushes them down the divisional rankings). If your team isn't in the top 7 out of the 16 teams in your conference, your team stays home.
+
+If there's a tie (say two teams in a division get equal wins and losses), there's a long list of tie-breaking factors to ensure one team gets placed above another. (fun fact, the first tiebreaker is win/loss record within your division, so again divisional games are high-stakes!)
+
+After Week 18, the NFL immediately moves to the Playoffs, which utilize a bracketed single-elimination tournament (fun fact, this is the only major professional sports league in the US to do this! Baseball, Hockey, and Basketball all use best-of-x games).
+
+The first round of the Playoffs, are called the wildcard games. The top seed gets a bye week, leaving the 6 remaining to play in the wildcard round. The three wild-card teams play against the three remaining division leaders (at the division leader's home stadium, so the team that did better during the regular season gets home field advantage), so there are 6 total games this weekend.
+
+The second round of the Playoffs, also known as the Divisional Round, the top seed faces the lowest seeded team in the conference, and the second and third seeds in each conference face off (at the higher seeded team's home field), for a total of four games.
+
+The third round of the Playoffs, also known as the Conference Championship round, pits the remaining two teams in each conference against each other (with the higher seed hosting).
+The winner of each game becomes the conference winner and the conference champions face off in the Super Bowl.