The National Football League preseason is the period each year during which NFL teams play several not-for-the-record exhibition games before the actual "regular" season starts.
In fact, until league play was formalized in 1920, one could consider virtually all of an independent professional football team's schedule to be exhibitions (as in test matches).
The Pittsburgh Steelers (then known as the Pirates) were well known for playing both in the NFL and on a limited schedule in the decades-old Western Pennsylvania circuit in the 1930s.
With the AFL–NFL merger of 1970, the newly merged NFL was granted a Sherman Anti-Trust Act exemption, which emboldened some team owners to expand the exhibition schedule and to require season-ticket holders to pay for one, then two, then three home exhibition games if they wanted to keep their season tickets.
From 1999 to 2001, when the league consisted of an uneven 31 teams, some additional exhibition games (usually two or three) were played over Hall of Fame weekend.
The 2009 game, however, was between two original American Football League teams: the Buffalo Bills and the Tennessee Titans (formerly the Houston Oilers).
Wilson and Adams were also the two last surviving members of the original AFL ownership cabal, and are two of the only three men who have majority-owned a professional football franchise continuously for fifty years or more (the late George Halas, who owned the Chicago Bears from 1920 to 1983, is the third).
In 1999 the San Diego Chargers played their division rivals the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs in the preseason.
For decades, the WIFU was seen especially in Eastern Canada as an inferior competition to the IRFU; however, even without this, preseason play between the NFL and Western Canadian teams was considered as impractical because, even at this time, the Western Canadian regular season started much earlier than other professional leagues including the IRFU: further, the travel distances between NFL cities and Western Canadian cities in an era when professional sports teams still traveled mostly by rail was another obstacle.
From 1967 to 1969, during the transition period leading up to the formal AFL–NFL merger, the NFL and American Football League played each other in a series of exhibition matches; notably, the 1969 match between the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins was the only time Vince Lombardi ever lost to an AFL team.
Unlike the regular season, CBS's and Fox's national exhibition game opponents are selected regardless of conference.
There is usually a conflict with the Major League Baseball season, a situation seen in the 2015 preseason when the Pittsburgh Steelers moved a Sunday evening game against the Green Bay Packers at Heinz Field to a traditional 1 p.m. kickoff to avoid parking conflicts with the Pittsburgh Pirates across their shared lot at PNC Park, when the Pirates had a game moved to Sunday evening as part of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball.
The 2017 Cowboys-Texans preseason game, originally scheduled for Houston, was at first switched to Arlington due to the flooding spawned by Hurricane Harvey in southeast Texas.
The Alamodome in San Antonio hosted games in this fashion, as did Rogers Centre (as part of the Bills Toronto Series), with Camp Randall Stadium, the on-campus home of Wisconsin Badgers football in Madison, Wisconsin, hosting one preseason Green Bay Packers game per year until the late 1990s.
The game was originally proposed for Regina, Saskatchewan's Mosaic Stadium, but its CFL tenant rejected the proposal, fearing that they couldn't convert the field back to its Canadian football configuration (which uses a longer field than the NFL) in time for a game the next day.
Preseason broadcasts are typically syndicated to a network of stations within the team's market region, which also typically includes a package of team-produced programming throughout the season (such as analysis and coach's shows), local rights to games broadcast on cable, and the right to brand themselves as the "official" station of the team in the market.
Exhibition games are almost exclusively played at night due to hot summer weather, and are frequently scheduled based on local convenience.
Since 2015, Compass Media Networks carries select preseason contests involving the Las Vegas Raiders and Dallas Cowboys nationwide.
A judgment in 1974 stated: "No fewer than five lawsuits have been instituted from Dallas to New England, each claiming that the respective National Football League (NFL) team had violated the Sherman Act by requiring an individual who wishes to purchase a season ticket for all regular season games to buy, in addition, tickets for one or more exhibition or preseason games.
Most notably Sean McVay has elected to not play any starter at all in the preseason since his first head coaching season in 2017, and since then other teams have followed suit.
[26] Preseason games are more likely to feature rote plays and not the full playbook, especially for the offense, to avoid tipping the hand of future regular season opponents.
Reasons cited were solutions to future labor concerns about revenue, and the overall dissatisfaction with the exhibitions among players and fans.
This proposal was eventually rejected in negotiations for the NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement, due to objections and concerns over fatigue and injuries raised by the National Football League Players Association.
[31] The NFLPA voted July 3 to push for the elimination of the 2020 preseason entirely, with extended isolated practice sessions replacing the games.
[32] On July 21, 2020, a week before the scheduled opening of training camp, the NFLPA told its members that the league had decided to cancel all preseason games.