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When was the last time each NFL team was a No. 1 seed?

With the 2025-26 NFL playoffs quickly approaching, here’s a look at each team’s history with the coveted No. 1 seed.

The 2025 NFL season is just about wrapped up, with just one week of action left before a postseason many fans could never have imagined months ago begins.

While 12 of the 14 playoff spots are already determined ahead of Week 18 action, a fierce battle for the top spot in both the AFC and NFC remains as the top teams in both conferences fight for a first-round bye in the form of the No. 1 seed.

In the current NFL playoff system adopted ahead of the 2020 season, only the top-seeded team in each conference earns a first-round bye while the other six playoff teams must compete in the Wild Card Round. In the previous format of only six playoff teams per conference, the top two seeds in each conference were granted a first-round bye.

While the No. 1 seed guarantees home-field advantage throughout the conference playoffs, it’s also been far from a guarantor of success once reaching the postseason. Since the turn of the 21st century, only six Super Bowls have featured a matchup between No. 1 seeds, with the most recent occurrence being the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory over the Philadelphia Eagles following the 2022 season.

The seeding system itself is also not nearly as old as the league and is even younger than the Super Bowl, with the NFL first adopting a conference seeding format for the 1975 postseason. Prior to the advent of the seeding system, three division winners and one Wild Card team qualified for the playoffs in each conference, with home teams alternating by division.

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Since the league adopted the seeding format in 1975, 28 of the NFL’s 32 teams have earned a No. 1 seed in their respective conference at least once, with the New York Jets, Houston Texans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Arizona Cardinals being the four franchises who have never achieved the feat.

Though teams are fiercely battling for the No. 1 seed as the regular season nears its end, it’s almost been a bit of a curse for teams that reach the Super Bowl and face a team that was not also their conference’s top seed.

In Super Bowl matchups since 2000 where a No. 1 seed has faced off against a team that was not a No. 1 seed, the top-seeded team is a whopping 2-12, with the only exceptions being the New England Patriots’ victories in 2003 and 2016 over the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons, respectively.

With the Seattle Seahawks, San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots and Jacksonville Jaguars all still battling for a No. 1 seed, here’s a look at the last time each team accomplished the feat and how they fared that postseason:

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