For the people who run NFL teams, getting to the Super Bowl becomes a matter of solving an extravagant jigsaw puzzle. Not the kind of puzzle you buy at the museum that has a little print of Monet's haystacks on it, mind you, but one of those 5,000-piece monsters that forces you to recreate every inch of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.

Because the NFL has rules that limit spending, each franchise starts with virtually the same resources. So the challenge is to figure out how to arrange all the pieces to put the best possible team on the field. Do you splurge on a once-elite quarterback who is just returning from multiple neck surgeries? Or is it better to divide that cash for a linebacker, a tight end and a pair of beefy tackles?

The point here is that the NFL is basically a form of competitive economics—and by looking at the financial decisions teams make, you can learn a fair bit about the essential nature of modern football.

In advance of this weekend, when the playoffs begin, the Journal compared player salary payments for this year's 12 playoff teams with the 20 franchises that didn't make it. The goal: to figure out which spending strategies work—and which don't. The numbers, which are based on figures that were current at the end of the regular season, come from Spotrac, a website that compiles salary data.