NFC West

The NFC West is a division within the National Football Conference of the NFL. Its four current teams are the Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle Seahawks.

This division started in 1967 as the NFL Coastal Division, part of a league-wide theme where all divisions began with the letter "C." The name came from the teams’ locations near the U.S. coasts, though they sat on opposite sides of the country, which meant long travel distances for games. The original four members were the Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Colts, Los Angeles Rams, and San Francisco 49ers. Los Angeles and San Francisco were on the West Coast, while Baltimore dominated the weaker teams in the division. Atlanta was chosen over the expansion New Orleans Saints despite being farther east than three Eastern Conference teams: the Cowboys, Cardinals, and Saints themselves.

After the AFL–NFL merger in 1970, the division was renamed the NFC West. The Baltimore Colts moved to the AFC East and were replaced by the Saints, who had played in the Capitol Division in 1967 and 1969 and the Century Division in 1968. In 1976, the newly formed Seattle Seahawks spent one season here, though they did not play a home-and-home series with the other four division members; instead, they faced each of the other 13 NFC teams and the other expansion team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Seattle then moved to the AFC West. Except for that single year, the division stayed unchanged until 1995, when the Carolina Panthers joined as an expansion team. That same season, the Rams moved to St. Louis, making the division geographically inaccurate. At the time, ten of the fifteen NFC teams were based west of Atlanta, and twelve were west of Charlotte (only the Redskins, Eagles, and Giants were east).

The 2002 realignment completely reshaped the NFC West. The Falcons, Panthers, and Saints moved to the new NFC South. The Cardinals came over from the NFC East, and the Seahawks returned from the AFC West. The Rams stayed, preserving their long-standing rivalry with the 49ers that dated back to 1950. Until 2015, the Rams were the only team in the division located east of the Rocky Mountains. After realignment, all NFC West teams were based west of the Mississippi River. When the Rams returned to Los Angeles in 2016, the entire division sat west of the Rockies for the first time.