Welcome to the most exciting week ever, the NFL playoffs. Let’s delve into the workings of the playoffs. There are two divisions in the NFL: the AFC (American Football Conference) or the Eastern Conference, and the NFC (National Football Conference) which is the Western Conference. The top seven teams from these two divisions battle it out in the playoffs to earn a chance to play in the Super Bowl. The playoffs work as one-round elimination games. The first round of playoffs, the wild card, consists of the twelve teams playing in six games, vying to make it to the coveted second round. The top two teams get the week off to rest. Next is the Divisional Round, where the final eight teams pair off against each other to earn a spot in their conference final. The Conference Finals is where the last two teams from each division, the AFC and NFC, try to win the Conference Title. Lastly, the two teams that win the conference finals play each other in the Super Bowl.     

     Now let’s take a look at the playoff bracket. The two divisional leaders are the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens. As the divisional leaders, they don’t have to play in the wild-card round, which automatically puts them in the divisional round. After an exciting weekend of football last week, with some surprising upsets, the divisional bracket is shown in the graphic included in this article. 

     Our local San Francisco 49ers, are the first-seed team and are scheduled to play the seventh-seed Green Bay Packers at home at 5:15 PM.  The game can be seen on FOX. The 12-5 Forty Niners have undoubtedly one of the top defenses in the league, along with Brock Purdy who carries the top quarterback rating.  The 9-8 Green Bay Packers surprised everyone last weekend by upsetting the Dallas Cowboys in Texas.  It seems they’ve found their quarterback of the future in Jordan Love.