7. In the wild card playoffs, all the wild card teams except one were eliminated. Which team beat the Washington Redskins in the NFC wild card weekend?
From Quiz NFL 2012 Season Playoffs
Answer:
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks (#5 seed) beat the Washington Redskins (#4 seed) by 24 to 14. The wrong answers, Minnesota Vikings, Indianapolis Colts, and Cincinnati Bengals, were the other wild card teams. They were eliminated by their opponents, the Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Ravens, and Houston Texans, respectively.
Wild card teams are the teams whose performance for the season was not good enough to qualify, but are the best of the remaining, unselected teams. The teams for the playoffs are chosen by performance during the season. Each conference, the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC), consist of 16 teams each. The teams are further divided within the conference into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. By the end of the season, the best team of each division is selected for the playoffs, and, once more based on relative performance, ranked as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th seed within their respective conference. Thus, 8 teams total are competing in the playoffs. Then, 4 wild card teams, the 2 with the highest performance of the remaining teams from the AFC and the 2 with the highest performance of the remaining teams from the NFC, are selected for the playoffs and ranked as 5th or 6th seed within the conference. Teams ranked 3rd and 4th are pitted against the teams of the same conference. The 2 winning teams from each conference then advance to the divisional playoffs along with the 1st and 2nd seeds, who do not play during the wild card playoffs.