American Football OVERVIEW

American football standings guide

American football on Standings Now is built around the National Football League, the sport’s leading competition, with the other American football tables listed on this hub. The standings show wins, losses and win percentage, with points difference alongside. Thirty-two teams contest the NFL, split between the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference, each divided into four divisions of four. The season runs from the autumn into the winter, with the play-offs in January and the Super Bowl in February.

Each team plays 17 regular-season games across 18 weeks, with one bye week built into the schedule. The standings are ordered on win percentage, and ties are settled first on head-to-head record, then on division and conference record. The four division winners in each conference reach the play-offs automatically, joined by three wild-card teams — the best remaining records in the conference — for seven play-off teams per conference. The top seed in each conference gets a first-round bye and home advantage throughout the play-offs, which makes the race for first place almost as intense as the race to qualify at all.

The play-offs are single-elimination: one defeat ends a season. The divisional rounds lead to the conference championship games, and the two conference champions meet in the Super Bowl. Because every play-off game is win-or-go-home, the regular-season table matters twice over — it decides who qualifies, and it decides who plays at home.

Below the NFL, the hub lists the sport’s other competitions in the same format, so the same reading applies everywhere: win percentage first, then the competition’s own tiebreakers. The full table for every competition is one click away from the previews on this page. Division games carry extra weight in the tiebreakers, which is why a late-season divisional win can move a side more than a win against a team from the other conference.