Within each conference, the three division winners and one wild card team (the top non-division winner with the best overall regular season records) qualified for the playoffs. The three division winners were seeded 1 through 3 based on their overall won-lost-tied record, and the wild card team was seeded 4. The first round, the divisional playoffs, had a restriction where two teams from the same… More division could not meet: the surviving wild card team visited the division champion outside its own division that had the higher seed, and the remaining two teams from that conference played each other. The two surviving teams from each conference's divisional playoff games then meet in the respective AFC and NFC Conference Championship games, hosted by the higher seed. Although the Super Bowl, the third and final round of the playoffs, was played at a neutral site, the designated home team was based on an annual rotation by conference.

Playoff seeds
Seed AFC NFC
1 Pittsburgh Steelers (Central winner) Minnesota Vikings (Central winner)
2 Oakland Raiders (West winner) Los Angeles Rams (West winner)
3 Baltimore Colts (East winner) St. Louis Cardinals (NFL) (East winner)
4 Cincinnati Bengals (wild card) Dallas Cowboys (wild card) Less