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A Guide to the NFL’s NFC Conference

Introduction to the NFL

The NFL is an American football league in which 32 teams from across the US compete in two conferences, the National Football Conference, or NFC and the American Football Conference, or AFC. The most iconic American football franchises play in the two different conferences, but the NFL did not always use this structure.

It was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, but in 1960, a new league was formed, called the American Football League, or AFL. In 1970, the rival leagues merged, to create the NFL, with 16 teams in the original NFL forming the NFC, and 3 teams from the original NFL and the 13 teams from the AFL formed the American Football Conference, or AFC.

Today, there is no difference between the football, the salary caps, the drafting, or any structure or rules between the two conferences. They both comprise teams from across the US; only the teams within a conference play each other more frequently than teams from the other conference. There are regular season inter-conference games, but these are played between the teams of two divisions within either conference, rotating each year. This means that teams in either conference will only play against all the other teams in the other conference after every four years.

The teams in each conference are split into four divisions, comprising four teams each. At the end of the regular season, the teams that make top place in their divisions are declared division winners. Then, the top placing teams in each conference advance to the postseason, where the teams from a conference only play against the other teams from their conference that qualified for the playoffs. The teams from the NFC are paired, depending on whether they are divisional winners or qualified for the postseason through the wild cards, and then the last team remaining from the NFC wins the NFC Championship. The winner then plays against the winner of the AFC Championship in the Super Bowl, and the winner of that game is declared the NFL Champion.

NFC Divisions

North

The Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings play in the NFC North Division. Nicknamed the black and blue division, the division has a total of five Super Bowl wins.

The Packers are the most successful side with four Super Bowls, and five NFC Championships. The only other team in the division who have won the Super Bowl are the Bears, who also have two NFC Championship. The Vikings have lost three Super Bowls, though nowadays they, alongside the Bears, are the Packers’ biggest threat in the division. The Lions have only won the division three times and their best performance in the postseason was when they reached the NFC Championships in 1991.

East

The Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders play in the NFC East Division. It has the most successful teams in the NFL, and is the only division in which all four members have won at least one Super Bowl and appeared in multiple Super Bowls. The division currently has 13 Super Bowl victories and 21 NFC Championships. The Cowboys are the most successful team in the division with 5 Super Bowls, but they are followed closely by the Giants with 4, and the Commanders with 3. The Eagles also won the Super Bowl once, and have won the division multiple times in recent years. The division is famous for its deeply rooted rivalries and also for being unpredictable: there has not been a repeat division champion since 2004, the longest streak in NFL history.

South

The Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers play in the NFC South Division. This division was created in 2002, with the realigning of the divisions in the NFL. The teams in the division previously played in different divisions. The most successful teams since 2002 are the Buccaneers, who have won the Super Bowl twice, and the Saints who have won it once. The Panthers and Falcons are also formidable teams. The Panthers have won the NFC Championship and reached the Super Bowl twice, and the Falcons have won the NFC Championship and reached the Super Bowl once.

West

The Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks all play in the NFC West Division. From the current teams in the West Division, the 49ers are the most successful team, as they have won the Super Bowl a total of 5 times. The Seahawks had a brief stint in the division in 1976-77, and then re-joined the division in 2002. They went on to win two NFC Championships and one Super Bowl. The Arizona Cardinals also joined the division in 2002, and they have won the division multiple times, also clinching an NFC Championship. The Rams have a similarly hectic relationship with the division as the Seahawks. They were amongst the inaugural members in the division in 1967, and won an NFC Championship before they rebranded to become the St Louis Rams in 1995. They won two more NFC Championships and a Super Bowl before the franchise left the division in 2002. Finally, after a lot of public appeal, the franchise returned in 2016, rebranding back to the Los Angeles Rams, and they won two more NFC Championships and one more Super Bowl.