2015-16 NFL playoffs
| Dates | January 9–February 7, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season | 2015 | ||||
| Teams | 12 | ||||
| Games played | 11 | ||||
| Defending champions | New England Patriots | ||||
| Champions | Denver Broncos | ||||
| Runners-up | Carolina Panthers | ||||
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The National Football League playoffs for the 2015 season began on January 9, 2016. The postseason tournament concluded with Super Bowl 50, on February 7, when the Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
For this year only, the Super Bowl decided not to use a Roman numeral ("L") and instead used the standard numeral "50". According to Jaime Weston, the league's vice president of brand and creative, the primary reason was that the league's graphic designers had difficulty designing a suitable, aesthetically pleasing logo with only the Roman numeral "L".
Within each conference, the four division winners and the two wild card teams (the top two non-division winners with the best overall regular season records) qualified for the playoffs. The four division winners are seeded 1 through 4 based on their overall won-lost-tied record, and the wild card teams are seeded 5 and 6. The NFL does not use a fixed bracket playoff system, and there are no restrictions regarding teams from the same division matching up in any round. In the first round, dubbed the wild-card playoffs or wild-card weekend, the third-seeded division winner hosts the sixth seed wild card, and the fourth seed hosts the fifth. The 1 and 2 seeds from each conference then receive a bye in the first round. In the second round, the divisional playoffs, the number 1 seed hosts the worst surviving seed from the first round (seed 4, 5 or 6), while the number 2 seed will play the other team (seed 3, 4 or 5). 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 fourth and final round of the playoffs, is played at a neutral site, the designated home team is based on an annual rotation by conference.
In a change from previous seasons, both AFC Wild Card games were played on the Saturday, and then both NFC Wild Card games were played on the Sunday (instead of having a game from each conference on the same day).
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