1990–91 NFL playoffs

The National Football League playoffs for the 1990 season began on January 5, 1991. The postseason tournament concluded with the New York Giants defeating the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV, 20–19, on January 27, at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

The league expanded its playoff system from a 10-team to a 12-team tournament, which remained in use through the 2019–20 NFL playoffs. With these changes, three wild-card teams (those non-division champions with the conference's best won-lost-tied percentages) qualified from each conference, up from two the year before.

The format consisted of the following:

• The three division champions from each conference were seeded 1–3 based on their regular season won–lost–tied record.
• Three wild-card qualifiers were seeded 4, 5, and 6 within the conference.

The 3 seed hosted the 6 seed in one game while the 4 hosted the 5 seed in another game, both making up what was dubbed the "wild-card round". The 1 and 2 seeds from each conference receive a first-round bye, earning an automatic berth in the following week's "divisional playoff" games, where they faced the wild card survivors. The reseeding system was implemented in which the 1-seeded team played against the lowest-ranked wild card winner while the 2-seeded played against the other wild card winner. Whoever had the higher seed got the home-field advantage in a given game. In addition, a rule stating that teams from the same division cannot play against each other in the divisional round was abolished.

In each conference, the matchup between the 3 and 6 seeds in the wild-card round dictated where the wild-card round winners traveled to for the divisional round:

• If the 3-seeded team won, they traveled to the 2-seeded team while the winner of the 4 vs. 5 matchup traveled to the 1-seeded team.
• If the 6-seeded team won, they traveled to the 1-seeded team while the winner of the 4 vs. 5 matchup traveled to the 2-seeded team.

These changes meant that the lowest-seeded division winner in each conference no longer received automatic bye weeks, which had been done since the expansion of the playoffs to ten teams for the 1978 season. However, this did guarantee that the worst division winner would host a home playoff game for the first time. Before this change, the only way the #3 seed got the right to host a playoff game only if they were the highest remaining seed after the Divisional Playoffs, earning them the right to host their conference’s respective championship game.

This system was later modified before the 2002–03 NFL playoffs after the league realigned the teams into eight divisions (four per conference). The number of teams in the playoffs remained the same, but now there were four division champions and two wild-card teams from each conference. This system was kept until 2020.

As of the 2022–23 playoffs, this is the last postseason in which all division winners won a playoff game.