Your record and the teams that matched it

The two steppers set your team’s wins and losses, and a tie can be added if your season has one. Every NFL season from 2002 to 2025 is searched for teams that had exactly that record after the same number of their own games. Counting games rather than weeks keeps bye weeks out of the comparison. When fewer than twelve teams share a record, the comparison takes in every team within one win of it at the same point and says so above the count.

The count, and how those teams got in

The answer is a count of real teams rather than a percentage: how many of the teams that stood where yours stands went on to play in January. Under it, the playoff teams are split into division winners, wild cards and, for seasons before 2020, the seventh seed that today’s seven-team conference fields would have added. A 2-4 start shows 25 of 153 under today’s rule; switch to What actually happened and it drops to 18, because seven of those 25 were seventh seeds in years when only six teams per conference went through.

What they did in the games left

This block compares what the playoff teams and the rest did after the point of comparison, separately for seasons of 17 and 16 games, since the number of games left is different. For 2-4 in 17-game seasons the weakest finish that still got in was 7-4 the rest of the way, by the 2021 Eagles, the 2022 Jaguars and the 2023 Packers, and the best finish that missed was also 7-4, by the 2021 Colts, the 2022 Steelers and the 2024 Bengals. When the two lines meet like that, the calculator points it out, because it means the record alone did not decide those seasons.

The line below it counts the near misses: teams that finished level with the last wild card and lost the tie-break, and teams for whom one more win in place of a loss would have matched it.

The chart of every path

From your record, every matching team’s season runs on to its final game. Each step is one game: a win moves toward More wins, a loss toward More losses, and the dotted line marks .500. Mint lines carry the teams that made the playoffs and dashed raspberry lines the teams that missed, and a thicker line means more teams took that step. The labels on the right count how many 17-game teams finished on each record and how many of them got in; squares mark teams whose 16-game season ended a column earlier, and tapping one counts how many of them finished there.

Tapping a record further along the chart, or moving there with the arrow keys, fades every path that never passed through it. The panel underneath then gives two separate numbers: how many of your matching teams were on that record at that point and how many of them made it, and how all teams that ever stood on that record did, whatever they started from.

Teams that fell further behind, and the full list

If some playoff teams sank to a worse record than yours before recovering, they get a short row of cards that names their low point. Below that, every matching team is listed under Made it or Missed with its final record and how its season ended. Opening a team shows its season result by result, with a marker at the point of comparison, and draws its path on the chart.

How many wins were enough in the end

The last chart covers all teams, not only the ones that matched your record, and shows how often each final win total was enough. Seasons of 17 and 16 games are kept apart: under today’s rule 15 of 16 teams that won 10 of 17 games made it, against 64 of 66 that won 10 of 16, and nine wins was enough for 9 of 23 and 43 of 63. Outlined columns are the totals your team can still reach.

Where the numbers come from

Game results come from the open nflverse data. The seventh seeds for 2002 to 2019 are worked out with the order of the NFL tie-breaking procedures, and the result for each of those years matches the teams usually named as the hypothetical seventh seed. The counts describe teams that stood where yours stands; they do not account for your schedule, your division or injuries, so they are not a forecast for your team.