How the NFL Draft Order Is Set for Playoff and Non-Playoff Teams

By 4Football Staff · September 24, 2026 · 10 min read

The worst teams pick first, but the order for the playoff teams depends on how far they advanced. Here is the full slot-by-slot method, the tiebreakers and the common points of confusion.

A team loses in the divisional round with a 14-3 record. Another team finishes 8-9 and misses the playoffs. Which one picks first in the draft? Most people guess the second, and that guess is correct, but it only works because of a rule that most fans have never read in full: the NFL splits the draft order into two groups and uses different tools to sort each one.

The idea is simple to state. The worst-performing teams pick earlier so that they can improve faster. But "worst-performing" has to be defined for 32 teams, and the playoffs create a second ladder that overlaps with the regular-season standings. Once you see the structure, you can compute the order of the first round yourself, and you will understand why a few picks cannot be set until the Super Bowl is over.

All the numbers below assume the current playoff field of 14 teams, seven per conference. If the league changes the size of the field, the size of each group will change with it. Live standings are on our standings page, and the finished board lives on the draft page.

The two groups

Every team falls into one of two groups at the end of the season.

• Group one: the non-playoff teams. Eighteen teams when the field has 14 playoff teams. They hold picks 1 through 18 in the first round.
• Group two: the playoff teams. Fourteen teams, who hold picks 19 through 32.

Everything about the order follows from putting group one ahead of group two and then ordering each group on its own terms.

Group one: picks 1 to 18

The non-playoff teams are ordered by regular-season record, from the worst winning percentage to the best. The team with the worst record picks first overall, the next worst picks second, and so on through the best of the teams that missed the playoffs, who picks 18th.

Winning percentage, not wins, is the measure, because ties exist. A tie counts as half a win and half a loss, so a 7-9-1 team and an 8-9 team are compared by percentage. The method is the same one the standings use, described in How Ties Count in the NFL Standings.

Group two: picks 19 to 32

This is where many fans get tripped up. Playoff teams are not ordered by their regular-season records first. They are ordered by how far they advanced, and then by record inside each round.

The result is that a team's playoff result overrides its regular-season record. A team that was 14-3 and lost a Wild Card game will pick ahead of a team that was 10-7 and lost in the divisional round, because the first team's season ended earlier. The No. 1 seed in each conference gets a bye, but that has no effect on the draft order. If it loses its first game, in the divisional round, it falls into the divisional group like any other team.

Why the order is built this way

The playoff ladder is the league's way of saying that the team that advanced further was better. It is not a perfect measure, but it is easy to understand and cannot be manipulated after the fact. The league also wants the champion to pick last, as the best team of the season, and for the runner-up to pick just before it.

A hypothetical walk-through

Imagine a small version of the process so the order is easy to see. Say the 18 non-playoff teams are already sorted by record, and now the playoffs are played.

1. Wild Card weekend: twelve teams play, six win and six lose. The six losers are sorted by regular-season record. Say the losers finished 11-6, 10-7, 10-7, 9-8, 9-8 and 8-9. The 8-9 team picks 19th, the two 9-8 teams pick 20th and 21st (in an order set by a tiebreaker), the two 10-7 teams pick 22nd and 23rd, and the 11-6 team picks 24th.
2. Divisional round: eight teams play (the six winners plus the two byes). The four losers are sorted by record, and they take 25 through 28.
3. Conference championship games: the two losers are sorted by record and take 29 and 30.
4. Super Bowl: the loser takes 31 and the winner takes 32.

Note that nothing in this process looks at the opponent's quality or the playoff seed. Only the round of elimination and the record matter.

Breaking ties

A tie in record is common, especially in the middle of the pack. The NFL has a separate set of draft tiebreakers, and they are not the same as the playoff tiebreakers.

Strength of schedule comes first

For teams with matching records, the draft tiebreaker begins with strength of schedule: the combined winning percentage of all the opponents a team played during the regular season. The team that played the weaker opponents, meaning the lower combined winning percentage, gets the earlier pick.

The reasoning is that a team with the same record against an easier slate had an advantage, so it picks higher, and a team that earned the same record against a tougher slate is rewarded with a later (that is, lower-value) selection. Strength of schedule is also the tiebreaker when two teams are tied after the same playoff round.

Further steps

If teams are still tied after strength of schedule, the league applies additional steps that look at head-to-head results, division or conference records and games against common opponents, and ends with a coin toss if nothing separates the teams. The exact order of those later steps, and how they treat three or more tied teams, is written in the league's operating rules. Check the official procedures if you need to settle a specific tie.

A tie across the two groups

This cannot happen. Because the groups are separate, a playoff team always picks after a non-playoff team, no matter how the records compare. A 10-7 team that misses the playoffs picks ahead of a 9-8 team that squeaked into the field.

A tiebreak example

Say two non-playoff teams both finish 6-11 and are fighting over the 5th and 6th picks. Team A played opponents whose combined winning percentage was lower, which means an easier schedule. Team B faced stronger opponents. Strength of schedule gives Team A the earlier pick, at 5, and Team B picks 6th. Notice what the rule does not ask: who won the game between them, which team scored more points, or which team looked better on film. It is a single, mechanical comparison, and that is the point of it. If Team A and Team B had matching schedule strength down to the last decimal, the league would move on to its later steps.

When more than two teams are tied, the league works through them in a similar way, and the rules explain how a three-way or four-way tie is resolved and how the process restarts once one team is placed. The idea is the same as in the playoff tiebreakers described in How NFL Playoff Tiebreakers Actually Work, where a team that is separated from the pack is removed and the rest start again from the first step.

How to work out the order yourself

You can predict most of the first round with nothing more than the final standings and the playoff results. A simple routine:

1. List every team that did not make the playoffs and sort them by winning percentage, from the lowest to the highest. That gives you picks 1 through 18.
2. Wherever two or more teams share a winning percentage, look up each one's strength of schedule and give the earlier pick to the team with the lower figure.
3. List the six Wild Card round losers, sort them by regular-season record from the worst to the best, and assign picks 19 through 24.
4. Do the same for the four divisional round losers (picks 25 to 28) and the two conference championship losers (picks 29 and 30).
5. Place the Super Bowl loser at 31 and the winner at 32.
6. Finally, adjust for trades. Every pick can belong to a team other than the one whose record created the slot.

The standings page gives you the records for steps one and three. The draft board itself, with trades applied, is on our draft page. Our standings use a simplified set of tiebreakers, so treat a projected order for tied teams as a guide, not an official result.

How rounds two to seven relate to round one

The first round gets the attention, but the same logic runs through the rest of the draft. A team with the 5th pick in the first round also has the 5th pick in the second, third and later rounds, unless it has traded one of them away. That is why a team with a poor record gets an advantage across the entire draft, not only in the first round, and why a team that traded its first-round pick can still have its second-round pick at the same early position.

It also explains why the numbering looks the way it does. The 33rd pick overall is the first selection of the second round, taken by the team that picked first in round one. A team near the bottom of the standings therefore holds an early pick in every round, which is valuable because players it likes who slide out of the first round may still be available at the top of the second.

Why the order is not final until the end

At the end of the regular season, the 18 non-playoff teams know their positions, apart from ties. The 14 playoff teams know only that they will pick in the second half of the round. Their exact slots depend on how the playoffs unfold, so the order of picks 19 through 32 is not known until the day of the Super Bowl.

This also helps explain why trades involving late first-round picks often appear after the playoffs. Until the games are over, a team cannot be sure whether its pick will be 19th or 30th.

What changes the board before the draft

Several things can change who actually holds a given slot, even though the underlying order is set.

• Trades: a pick can belong to another team. When a team holds a pick that came from another team, the pick takes the slot of the original team. See Inside the NFL Draft: Rounds, Order and Trades.
• Compensatory picks: these are added at the end of rounds three through seven. See The Compensatory Pick Formula Explained.
• Forfeited picks: if the league penalizes a team by taking a pick, the pick is removed from that round, so the teams behind it simply go one pick sooner on the clock.

The same order applies from round to round, so the team picking first in round one also picks first in rounds two through seven, unless trades or forfeits intervene. It is the reason a team's number of picks matters as much as the specific slot.

Does the system encourage losing?

Fans and analysts have argued about this for decades. Critics say a weak team that is out of contention has an incentive to lose, because a worse record means an earlier pick. Defenders say the benefit is too uncertain: a high pick does not guarantee a great player, coaches and players are paid to win, and losing has direct costs for jobs and ticket sales. Leagues that use a lottery for the top picks are partly motivated by the first concern. The NFL does not currently use one; the full-order approach is the norm, and the league has never had a lottery. Whether it ever will is a matter for the owners.

You can judge for yourself how strongly the incentive works by watching what teams do in the last weeks of a lost season. Most coaches keep trying to win, because the people in the building are judged on results.

Common misunderstandings

"The Super Bowl loser picks 31st because it was the second-best team." More precisely, it picks 31st because it advanced to the final game and lost. The team with the best regular-season record may have been eliminated much earlier and picks earlier than that.

"A bye means a better pick." The bye does not change the order. It matters only through the result of the next game.

"Better strength of schedule means a later pick." In the draft tiebreaker, the team with the weaker schedule picks first among tied teams, so the team with the stronger schedule picks later.

"The order is the same for all seven rounds." It is, but the teams holding those picks may differ because of trades.

The short version

• With 14 playoff teams, picks 1 to 18 go to non-playoff teams in reverse order of record, and picks 19 to 32 go to playoff teams.
• Playoff teams are ordered first by the round in which they lost, then by record. The Super Bowl winner picks last.
• Ties are broken first by strength of schedule, with the team that played the weaker schedule choosing earlier, then by further steps and finally a coin toss.
• The exact slots for picks 19 through 32 are not known until the playoffs end.
• Trades, compensatory picks and forfeited picks change who holds each slot, not the order itself.
• If the league changes the playoff field or the tiebreakers, the numbers will change, so check the current draft procedures.