The 2026 NFL season is one game old. Seattle beat New England 13-10 on Thursday night, and 30 teams have yet to play a snap. That is the honest starting point for any playoff projection published this week, and it is worth saying out loud before anyone reads a seeding table.
So our NFL playoff predictions below do two jobs. They set out exactly how the 14-team playoff field is decided, which does not change from week to week, and they give our projected seven in each conference as of 10 September 2026. The structure is fact. The seeds are a call, and we will move them as results come in.
How the NFL playoff field is decided
Fourteen teams reach the postseason, seven from each conference. The four division winners take seeds one through four, ordered by record. The three best remaining teams in the conference take seeds five, six and seven as wild cards, regardless of division.
Two consequences of that structure drive most of the drama in December. A division winner is seeded above every wild card even when the wild card has a better record, so a 9-8 division champion hosts an 11-6 wild card. And only the number one seed gets a bye week, which makes the gap between first and second the most valuable single place in the bracket.
| Seed | How you get it | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Best record among division winners | First-round bye, home field throughout |
| 2 to 4 | Remaining division winners by record | Home wild card game |
| 5 to 7 | Best three non-division-winners | Road wild card game |
When two teams finish level, the tiebreakers run in a fixed order. Head-to-head record comes first, then record within the division for divisional ties or within the conference for wild card ties, then record in common games, then strength of victory. Ties are broken far more often by head-to-head and divisional record than by anything further down that list, which is why a sweep of a division rival in October decides seeding in January.
Where the 2026 race actually stands
One result is in. Seattle sit 1-0 and New England 0-1, and the remaining 15 Week 1 games run from Thursday through Monday night, with the bulk of the slate on Sunday 13 September.
Records will not tell you much for a while. A 2-0 start is worth roughly a third of a win in projected final standing once you account for schedule, so the useful signals early are points differential, whether a team is winning close games or comfortable ones, and how the division around them is shaping up. Judging a playoff race on records alone before about Week 6 tends to reward whoever drew the softest opening month.
Our week-by-week calls live on the NFL picks page, and the season-long markets are on the NFL futures page. If the seeding rules above are new to you, how the NFL works covers the structure from the ground up and our NFL power rankings show where the model rates all 32 teams right now.
Our projected AFC playoff seven
Projection as of 10 September 2026, before the Week 1 Sunday slate. These are our editorial calls, not a model output.
| Seed | Team | Route in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baltimore Ravens | AFC North |
| 2 | Buffalo Bills | AFC East |
| 3 | Kansas City Chiefs | AFC West |
| 4 | Houston Texans | AFC South |
| 5 | Denver Broncos | Wild card |
| 6 | Los Angeles Chargers | Wild card |
| 7 | Cincinnati Bengals | Wild card |
The AFC West is the reason this projection is fragile. Putting Kansas City, Denver and the Chargers in the field means three of the seven places come out of one division, and the schedule will not allow all three to bank easy divisional wins. If any of those three slip, the most likely replacement is a second AFC North team, because that division splits its own games so evenly that a 10-win second place is normal there.
Houston at four rather than higher reflects seeding rather than quality. The AFC South projects to produce the weakest division winner, and the four seed is what that usually earns.
Our projected NFC playoff seven
| Seed | Team | Route in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philadelphia Eagles | NFC East |
| 2 | Detroit Lions | NFC North |
| 3 | Los Angeles Rams | NFC West |
| 4 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | NFC South |
| 5 | Green Bay Packers | Wild card |
| 6 | Washington Commanders | Wild card |
| 7 | San Francisco 49ers | Wild card |
The NFC North is the tightest call on the page. Detroit, Green Bay and Minnesota are close enough that the division could finish in any order, and we have two of the three in the field with Minnesota just outside. Green Bay open at Minnesota on Sunday, so that projection gets tested immediately.
Seattle are the obvious omission after opening with a win. One home victory over New England does not move a projection much, and the NFC West still runs through Los Angeles and San Francisco on our reading. Ask again in a month.
What would change these playoff predictions
Three things move a playoff picture faster than results do.
- Quarterback availability. Nothing else on a roster swings a projected win total as far. A starter missing four games is worth roughly a win and a half in the standings, which is usually the margin between a bye and a road game.
- Divisional sweeps. Six of a team’s 17 games are inside the division, and those results carry double weight because they also serve as the first tiebreaker.
- Points differential ahead of record. A 3-2 team outscoring opponents by 40 is in better shape than a 4-1 team scraping one-point wins. Differential predicts the rest of a season better than record does through the first month.
We will revisit this page through the season, and the projections above carry a date for that reason. Treat any playoff table published in September as a starting position rather than a forecast.
Following the race from Canada
Kickoffs are listed in Eastern Time across our NFL coverage, so a 1:00pm ET Sunday game is 10:00am in Vancouver and 2:00pm in Halifax. The Sunday afternoon windows at 1:00pm and 4:25pm ET carry most of the schedule, with a single Sunday night game and Monday night to close each week.
For broadcast details, how to watch the NFL in Canada covers the Canadian rights picture. If you are betting the race rather than just following it, how to bet on the NFL in Canada explains the provincial rules, and NFL betting sites in Canada covers where those markets are available. Which sportsbooks you can legally use depends on your province, and futures markets on seeding and conference winners move sharply on injury news, so prices quoted anywhere on this site are approximate at the time of writing.
The official NFL standings are the authority on records and clinching scenarios as the season runs.
Fourteen teams reach the playoffs, seven from each conference. The four division winners take seeds one to four by record, and the three best remaining teams in the conference take seeds five to seven as wild cards.
Only the number one seed in each conference gets a first-round bye. Seeds two to seven all play in wild card weekend, so the gap between the first and second seed is the most valuable place in the bracket.
Head-to-head record comes first. Then divisional record for teams in the same division, or conference record for wild card ties, followed by record in common games and strength of victory. Most ties are settled by head-to-head or divisional record.
The 18-week regular season runs from September 2026 into early January 2027, with wild card weekend following it and Super Bowl LXI in February 2027. Exact dates are confirmed by the NFL later in the season.
19+ (18+ in AB/MB/QC) | Please play responsibly | Projections and odds approximate at time of writing | ConnexOntario: 1-866-531-2600 (ON). See your province’s helpline for resources elsewhere.