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The play-offs for the 2025 NFL season get under way on Saturday when the Carolina Panthers host the Los Angeles Rams at 21:30 GMT (16:30 local time).<\/b><\/p>\n
They are two of the 14 teams who will feature in the play-offs, with seven teams qualifying from the American Football Conference (AFC) and seven from the National Football Conference (NFC).<\/p>\n
Each conference is kept apart during 12 knockout games over three weeks to decide which team represents their conference in the Super Bowl – the NFL’s championship game.<\/p>\n
Teams are seeded from one to seven and those who finished top of each conference during the 17-game regular season automatically qualify for the Divisional Round – the second week of the play-offs.<\/p>\n
This season, the Denver Broncos earned the AFC’s top seed and the Seattle Seahawks topped the NFC.<\/p>\n
The other 12 teams enter from the first round, known as Wildcard Weekend, and the highest remaining seeds in each round have home-field advantage.<\/p>\n
In the wildcard round, the teams ranked second in each conference play the seventh seed, third plays sixth and fourth faces fifth.<\/p>\n
The winners of those six games will join the top seeds in the Divisional Round, where the top seed faces the lowest-ranked team, and the two other teams face each other.<\/p>\n
The winners of those four games reach the Conference Championships – effectively the Super Bowl semi-finals.<\/p>\n
The overall NFL champions will be crowned at Super Bowl LX, the 60th edition of the league’s showpiece finale, on Sunday, 8 February at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n