1974 playoffs and earlier

[CYYYFYYY]

It is next to impossible to find NFL playoff boxscoeres before 1974.  I managed to find a book that has championship and Super Bowl stats but not first round.  Can anyone help me with this?   Why is so hard to find anyway?

[cougarjake13]

<p>check out this site</p><p><a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/">http://www.pro-football-reference.com/</a></p>

[CYYYFYYY]

<p>&nbsp;</p><div>Pro football reference is a very good site however according to them stats in the playoffs did not exist before 1974.&nbsp; Look at Bradsahaw</div>

[El Mudo]

There were no "first rounds" during that period....the two division winners played each other...

The AFL had divisional playoffs, but not the NFL...


Here's a bit more:




Starting in 1933, the NFL decided its champion through a single postseason playoff game, called the NFL Championship Game. During this period, the league divided its teams into two groupings, through 1949 as divisions and from 1950 as conferences.

* 1933-1949 Divisions: Eastern & Western
* 1950-1952 Conferences: American & National
* 1953-1966 Conferences: Eastern & Western

The home team for the NFL Championship Game was determined by a yearly rotation between the conferences (or divisions), not by regular season records. If there was a tie for first place within the conference, an extra playoff game was played to determine which team would play in the NFL Championship Game. (This occurred nine times in these 34 seasons: 1941, 1943, 1947, 1950 (both conferences), 1952, 1957, 1958, & 1965.)

This last occurred during 1965 season, when the Green Bay Packers and Baltimore Colts tied for first place in the Western Conference (10-3-1). Green Bay had won both games with Baltimore during the regular season, but because there was no set tie-breaker system in place, a conference playoff game was conducted on December 26 (the scheduled date for the NFL championship game). The Cleveland Browns, the Eastern champion (11-3-0), did not play this week. This pushed the 1965 championship game to January 2, 1966, the first time the NFL champion was crowned in January. Green Bay won both post-season games at home, beating the injury-riddled Colts (with third string QB Tom Matte) in overtime by a field goal; and taking the title 23-12 on a very muddy field (Jim Brown's final NFL game). The 1965 season was the last without a Super Bowl.

For the 1960 through 1969 seasons, the NFL also held an additional post-season game called the "Playoff Bowl" (aka the "Bert Bell Benefit Bowl" or the "Runner-up Bowl"). These games matched the second place teams from the two conferences; the CBS television network advertised them as "playoff games for third place in the NFL." All ten of these consolation games were played in the Orange Bowl in Miami in January, the week after the NFL championship game. The NFL now classifies these contests as exhibition games and does not include the records, participants, or results in the official league playoff statistics. The Playoff Bowl was mercifully discontinued after the completion of the AFL-NFL merger; the final edition was played in January 1970.



And:



After adding the expansion New Orleans Saints in 1967, the NFL split its 16 teams into two conferences with 2 divisions each: the Capitol and Century Divisions in the Eastern Conference, and the Coastal and Central Divisions in the Western Conference. The playoff format was expanded from a single title game to a four-team tournament, with the four divisional champions participating. The two division winners in each conference met in the "Conference Championships" with the winners advancing to the NFL Championship Game. Again, the home team for each playoff game was determined based on a yearly divisional or conference rotation.

Following the NFL Championship Game for the 1966 through 1969 seasons, the NFL champion played the AFL champion in Super Bowls I through IV, the only true inter-league championship games of professional football. The first two games were convicingly won by the NFL's Packers, the last two by the AFL's New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs, leaving the leagues even at 2-2 in World Championship competition as they merged.