1. The winners of the Super Bowl are given the last selection, and the losers the second to last selection.[2]
2. Remaining teams are sorted by regular season record, with worse records picking first, regardless of playoff status; teams that make the playoffs can pick before teams that do not.
3. For teams with the same record, teams that fail to make the playoffs always pick before teams that earned playoff berths.
4. For teams that make the playoffs, ties are broken by the order in which teams lost in the playoffs.
5. Remaining ties are broken by strength of schedule. For draft order, a lower strength of schedule results in an earlier pick. If strength of schedule does not resolve a tie, division and/or conference tiebreakers may be used. If the tie still cannot be broken, a coin toss at the NFL Combine is used to determine draft order. (Note: Strength of schedule is the combined records of a team's 16 opponents, including games played against the team in question, and counting divisional opponents twice. Because of this, each team's opponents' combined wins and losses—counting a tie as a half-win, half-loss—will add up to 256, so a team whose opponents had more combined wins has a better strength of schedule.)