1976–77 NFL playoffs
NFL seasonal playoff games
The National Football League playoffs for the 1976 season began on December 18, 1976. The postseason tournament concluded with the Oakland Raiders defeating the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl XI, 32–14, on January 9, 1977, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
Participants
Within each conference, the three division winners and the non-division winner with the best record qualified for the playoffs. The three division winners were seeded 1–3 based on their overall won-lost-tied record, and the wild card team was seeded 4. The first round, dubbed the divisional playoffs, had a restriction where two teams from the same division could not meet: the surviving wild card team visited the highest-seeded division champion that was outside its own division, and the remaining two teams from that conference played each other. The two surviving teams from each conference's divisional playoff games met in the respective AFC and NFC Conference Championship games, hosted by the higher seed. Although the Super Bowl, the championship round of the playoffs, was played at a neutral site, the designated home team was based on an annual rotation by conference.
Bracket
Schedule
Christmas fell on a Saturday in 1976. In order to avoid scheduling playoff games on the holiday, the regular season opened a week earlier than normal (September 12, the second Sunday of the month, rather than the customary third Sunday) so that the Divisional Playoffs could be held on December 18 and 19 instead of December 25 and 26, and thus no games would be needed on Christmas Day. The conference championship games were played Sunday, December 26, and Super Bowl XI was played on January 9, the earliest date in Super Bowl history.
“1976–77 NFL playoffs” enters the record as nFL seasonal playoff games. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what playoffs, seasonal and playoff can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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