National Football Conference

The National Football Conference (NFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. The NFC and its counterpart, the American Football Conference (AFC), each contain 16 teams organized into 4 divisions. Both conferences were created as part of the 1970 NFL merger with the rival American Football League (AFL), with all ten of the former AFL teams and three NFL teams forming the AFC while the remaining thirteen NFL clubs formed the NFC. A series of league expansions and division realignments have occurred since the merger, thus making the total of 16 clubs in each conference. The defending NFC champions are the Philadelphia Eagles, who defeated the San Francisco 49ers in the 2022 season's NFC Championship Game for their fourth conference championship. Teams Since 2002, like the AFC, the NFC has 16 teams that organized into four divisions each with four teams: East, North, South, and West. Season structure This chart of the 2022 season standings displays an application of the NFL scheduling formula. The Eagles in 2022 (highlighted in green) finished in first place in the NFC East. Thus, in 2023, the Eagles will play two games against each of its division rivals (highlighted in light blue), one game against each team in the NFC West and AFC East (highlighted in yellow), and one game each against the first-place finishers in the NFC North, NFC South (highlighted in orange), and AFC West (highlighted in pink). The fourteen opponents each team faces over the 17-game regular season schedule are set using a pre-determined formula: