2016 NFL season

The season concluded with Super Bowl LI, the league's championship game on February 5, 2017, at NRG Stadium in Houston with the New England Patriots defeating the Atlanta Falcons.

On March 9, clubs exercised options for 2016 on players who have option clauses in their 2015 contracts, submitted qualifying offers to their restricted free agents with expiring contracts and to whom desire to retain a Right of Refusal/Compensation, submitted a Minimum Salary Tender to retain exclusive negotiating rights to their players with expiring 2015 contracts and who have fewer than three accrued season of free agent credit, and teams were required to be under the salary cap, using the "Top-51" definition (in which the 51 highest-paid players on the team's payroll must have a collective salary cap hit below the actual cap).

[4] In addition, a number of highly paid players were released after the start of the league year to allow their teams to regain space under the salary cap.

By way of a trade with the Tennessee Titans, the Los Angeles Rams held the first overall pick and selected QB Jared Goff.

Green spent ten years coaching the Vikings, eight of them being playoff seasons, but never made it to the Super Bowl.

The protests began in the NFL, when San Francisco 49ers' quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the anthem, as opposed to the tradition of standing, before a preseason game.

[42] The 6th Annual NFL Honors, saluting the best players and plays from 2016 season, was held at the Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Texas on February 4, 2017.

Jackson spent most of the past two seasons as the offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals and had previously served as head coach for the Oakland Raiders.

[141] The Atlanta Falcons played their 25th and final season at the Georgia Dome, with the team's new home field, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, opened in 2017.

[144] On January 4, three teams filed to relocate to Los Angeles: the Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, and the St. Louis Rams, all three of which had previously resided in the city at various points in their history.

[145] Despite the Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities recommending the Raiders' and Chargers' joint proposal for a stadium in Carson, California, on January 12, the league approved the Rams' proposal to relocate to Inglewood after three ballots and gave the Chargers the option to share the Rams' stadium if they so chose.

The Rams and the St. Louis CVC (Convention & Visitors Commission) began negotiating deals to get the Rams' home stadium, The Dome at America's Center (then known as Edward Jones Dome), into the top 25 percent of stadiums in the league (i.e., top eight teams of the thirty-two NFL teams in reference to luxury boxes, amenities and overall fan experience).

Under the terms of the lease agreement, the St. Louis CVC was required to make modifications to the Edward Jones Dome in 2005.

The City of St. Louis, in subsequent years, made changes to the score board and increased the natural lighting by replacing panels with windows, although the overall feel remained dark.

Publicly, city, county and state officials expressed no interest in providing further funding to the Edward Jones Dome in light of those entities, as well as taxpayers, continuing to owe approximately $300 million more on that facility.

On January 31, 2014, both the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Rams owner Stan Kroenke had purchased 60 acres of land adjacent to the Forum in Inglewood, California.

The project included a stadium of up to 80,000 seats and a performance venue of 6,000 seats while reconfiguring the previously approved Hollywood Park plan for up to 890,000 square feet of retail, 780,000 square feet of office space, 2,500 new residential units, a 300-room hotel and 25 acres of public parks, playgrounds, open space and pedestrian and bicycle access.

In lieu of this the city of St. Louis responded on January 9, 2015, by unveiling an outdoor, open air, riverfront stadium that could have accommodated the Rams and an MLS team with the hope that the NFL bylaws would force them to stay.

[151] On February 19, 2015, the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers announced plans for a privately financed $1.7 billion stadium that the two teams would build in Carson, California if they were to move to the Los Angeles market.

The Chargers had been looking to replace Qualcomm Stadium (which, like the Oakland Coliseum opened in the late 1960s) since at least 2003, and had an annual out clause in which it could move in exchange for paying a fine to the city of San Diego for its remaining years on its lease.

However, that team's then growing rivalry with the San Francisco 49ers had pointed to either the Arizona Cardinals or the then-St. Louis Rams switching conferences to take the Raiders' spot in the AFC West.

Had the Rams stayed in St. Louis, switching them to the AFC would have allowed for a yearly home-and-home with the cross-state Kansas City Chiefs.

[163] The field was replaced beginning on February 4, 2016, timed to be installed by the start of the Johns Hopkins lacrosse season.

This change can, theoretically, allow a game with playoff implications in the final week of the season to be moved to primetime for greater prominence.

Commissioner Roger Goodell that the league was "thrilled to add NBC to the Thursday Night Football mix, a trusted partner with a proven track record of success broadcasting NFL football in primetime, and look forward to expanding with a digital partner for what will be a unique tri-cast on broadcast, cable and digital platforms.

[179] After 2015's Bills–Jaguars International Series contest was a modest success, the league was initially expected to make all three of the 2016 London games exclusive to the Internet.

[181] Ultimately, the league decided not to make the International Series games Web-exclusive, instead focusing its efforts on the Thursday Night Football partnership with Twitter.

[185] Tirico eventually got his chance the next season, when NBC announced he would replace Michaels after the NFL waived its broadcast team clause.

Tirico's colleague at ESPN, Heather Cox, was also hired by NBC as their sideline reporter for Thursday Night Football, after Michele Tafoya opted out to spend more time with family, and to focus on SNF.

Tony Romo, who would retire at the end of this season, would replace Simms as lead color commentator on CBS.