The National Football League playoffs for the 1990 season began on January 5, 1991. The postseason tournament concluded with the New York Giants defeating the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV, 20–19, on January 27, at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida.
The league expanded its playoff system from a 10-team to a 12-team tournament, which remained in use through the 2019–20 NFL playoffs. With these changes, three wild-card teams (those non-division champions with the conference's best won-lost-tied percentages) qualified from each conference, up from two the year before.
The format consisted of the following: The three division champions from each conference were seeded 1 through 3 based on their regular season won–lost–tied record. Three wild-card qualifiers were seeded 4, 5 and 6 within the conference.
The 3 seed hosted the 6 seed in one game while the 4 hosted the 5 seed in other game, both making up what was dubbed the "wild-card round". The 1 and 2 seeds from each conference receive a first-round bye, earning an automatic berth in the following week's "divisional playoff" games, where they faced the wild card survivors. The 1-seeded team played against the lowest-ranked wild card winner while the 2 seed played the other remaining team. In a given game, whoever had the higher seed got the home-field advantage. In addition, a rule stating that teams from the same division cannot play against each other in the divisional round was abolished.
In each conference, the matchup between the 3 and 6 seeds in the wild-card round dictated where the wild-card round winners traveled to for the divisional round: If the 3-seeded team won, they traveled to the 2-seeded team while the winner of the 4 vs. 5 matchup traveled to the 1-seeded team. If the 6-seeded team won, they traveled to the 1-seeded team while the winner of the 4 vs. 5 matchup traveled to the 2-seeded team.
These changes forced the division winner with the worst record in each conference to play in the first round. However, it guaranteed that division winner a home game, unlike in the previous format where the highest-seeded wild-card team earned a home playoff game while the lowest-seeded division winner, despite earning a bye, was forced to play the 2-seeded or 1-seeded division winner (based on the no-divisional matchup rule) and thus cannot host any playoff game before their respective conference championship (provided that they were the highest remaining seed).
This system was later modified before the 2002–03 NFL playoffs after the league realigned the teams into eight divisions (four per conference). The number of teams in the playoffs remained the same, but now there were four division champions and two wild-card teams from each conference. This system was kept until 2020.
As of the 2022–23 playoffs, this is the last postseason in which all division winners won a playoff game.
Participants
Bracket
Schedule
With the expansion from a 10-team to a 12-team playoff system, "wild card Sunday" became "wild card Weekend", with two games played on Saturday and two on Sunday, similar to the Divisional playoffs. From Super Bowl XXV onward, all Super Bowls have since been scheduled for 6 p.m. EST or later, regardless of the local time zone, so the game runs into the primetime hours.
ABC was awarded the rights to broadcast the two Saturday wild-card playoff games. CBS then televised the rest of the NFC games and NBC broadcast the rest of the AFC playoff games. ABC also televised Super Bowl XXV.
Wild card playoffs
Saturday, January 5, 1991
NFC: Washington Redskins 20, Philadelphia Eagles 6
The Redskins overcame losing two turnovers and a 6–0 deficit to score 20 unanswered points. This game was sweet revenge for the Redskins, who had lost to the Eagles 28–14 in a Monday night game during the season in which the Eagles defense had scored two touchdowns and knocked nine Washington players out of the game, including all of their quarterbacks. The game has become known as the "Body Bag Game" because the Eagles defense had taunted the Redskins by asking if they had enough body bags for their team.