How do they determine who is in the NFL playoffs?

Answer 1

In the simplest terms, the club with the better regular season record (their win-loss percentage) receives home field advantage (I want to say this has been the case since 1975). Which means that a wild-card team will never play at home in the first or second round of the playoffs because they always face a higher ranked team. For that matter, it is unlikely they will host any playoff game, unless the fifth and sixth seeded teams (the two wild-card teams) were to end up playing each other for the conference championship.

Here is a lot more information from NFL.com dealing with tiebreakers (used to determine home field at the end of the season). It might look a little overwhelming, but most of the rules are never needed (as you'll read, technically a coin toss could decide venue, but that's pretty unlikely). Enjoy.

http://www.nfl.com/standings/tiebreakers

Well, its not the team with the better record that plays at home on wildcard weekend, but the team that won their division. A #4 seed will have home field advantage over a wildcard 5 seed, even if the 5 seed had a better record, as happened in the wildcard game between the patriots and jaguars during wildcard weekend 2006, for the 2005 season.

The term "wild card round" is somewhat of a misnomer. In the first round of the playoffs, there are two divisional champions and two wild card teams. The highest-seeded division champion hosts the lowest-seeded wild card team, and the other division winner hosts the other wild card team.

The winners of these games go on to play two more division winners -- the top two seeds in each conference, who earned a "bye" and got to skip to the second round of the playoffs. Once again, the highest seeded division winner plays the lowest remaining seed.

Answer 2

The top teams in each of the eight divisions will automatically make the playoffs. Then there are two wildcard teams that make the playoffs from each conference (NFC & AFC). These two wildcard teams in each conference make the playoffs based off of who has the best record other than the four that have already won their division. If two teams have the same record, then they look at the head to head games, and then their point differential.

Recap:

8 teams who win their conferences, 4 in each conference (NFC, AFC), automatically make it (AFC West, AFC East, AFC North, AFC South, NFC West, NFC East, NFC North, NFC South)

4 teams, 2 in each conference (NFC, AFC), who have the best records other than the teams in the conference who have already won their division.