The National Football League (NFL) regular season begins on the weekend following the first Monday of September (i.e., the weekend following the Labor Day holiday) and ends in early January, after which that season's playoffs tournament begins.
[2] The schedule allows for four other regular time slots, in which these games are broadcast nationally across the country: Since the 2006 season, the NFL has used a "flexible scheduling" system for the last seven weeks of the regular season when there is a Sunday night game.
The home games of the then-Baltimore Colts also typically kicked off at 2:00 pm ET due to Maryland's blue laws at the time.
Maryland's blue laws were later modified, allowing the Baltimore Ravens to play their home games at 1:00 p.m.
[8] Since 2004, the NFL has indicated that the opening game will normally be hosted by the defending Super Bowl champions as the official start of their title defense.
Non-divisional intraconference match-ups can occur over consecutive years if two teams happen to finish in the same place consistently.
Similarly, the Jets and Browns played each other every season between 2015 and 2020 because both teams often landed in fourth place in their divisions.
[12] This rotation was slightly adjusted in 2010 for teams playing against the NFC West and AFC West, after several east-coast teams (such as the New England Patriots and New York Jets in 2008) all had to make four cross-country trips to play games in San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle in one season.
[14][15] Since 2010, every regular season ends with only divisional match-ups in the final week, in an attempt to discourage playoff-bound teams from resting their starters and playing their reserves.
However, interconference games remained based on a rotation, with most teams now playing four opponents from a division in the other conference on a three-year cycle.
For example, between 1970 (when the leagues merged) and 2002 (when the NFL expanded to 32 teams), the Denver Broncos and the Miami Dolphins played only six times, including a stretch where they met only once between 1976 and 1997[23] due to frequent fifth-place finishes by both teams and a cancelled 1987 game, while the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs met just four times in the same period, not playing each other at all between 1973 and 1991.
Prior to the 2011 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), there had been proposals to expand the regular season schedule to 17 or 18 games per team.
However, a longer regular season proposal was defeated in the 2011 labor negotiations between the owners and the players association.
[28] Another idea put forth by Houston Texans owner Bob McNair before his death was to move the traditional regional rivalries that are currently played in the preseason (such as the Governor's Cups) into a permanent annual part of each NFL team's schedule.
[36] The New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins played at Wembley Stadium in London on October 28, 2007, for the first of these games.
[37][38] A second game in London took place on Sunday 26 October 2008, when the San Diego Chargers took on the nominal “home team” New Orleans Saints, also at Wembley.
Since, the NFL has announced that the Jacksonville Jaguars will play one home game a season at Wembley, up to and including 2016, later extended to 2020.
[42] A second game was played at Wembley for the first time, with the Minnesota Vikings hosting and beating the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Poor ticket sales, fan disgust in Buffalo and the death of Bills owner Ralph Wilson prompted the cancellation of the series in 2014.
Since 2020, when the Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas, no stadium has been shared by an MLB and NFL team.
In 2013, the Super Bowl XLVII champion Baltimore Ravens were forced to open on the road due to their MLB counterparts, the Baltimore Orioles, being scheduled at home on the same day as the Week 1 NFL Kickoff game, and the Orioles declined to either reschedule or relocate their home game.
The Seattle Sounders FC also played on the road during the opening week of the 2014 NFL season, assuring no scheduling conflicts.
In the event that the 2011 season had been disrupted because of a then-ongoing labor dispute, the NFL had arranged its schedule to facilitate easier cancellations and postponements.
A few days before the start of the 2005 NFL season, the Louisiana Superdome was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, and much of the city of New Orleans was destroyed.
The game was postponed until November 9 because of Hurricane Ike (which caused some damage to Reliant Stadium) and several other changes had to be made to the schedule.
On August 29, 2021, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, causing severe damage to New Orleans; the New Orleans Saints' season opener against the Green Bay Packers, scheduled for September 12 at the Superdome, was moved to TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida.
[47][48][49][50] The roof of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome collapsed on December 12, 2010, after a severe heavy snowstorm, resulting in the stadium being unusable for the remainder of the season.
The last two of the Vikings' home games had to be moved: one to Ford Field in Detroit (which also led to the game being postponed the following Monday night) and another to TCF Bank Stadium, the University of Minnesota's college football stadium.
The older and more established National Football League went ahead and played as scheduled on Sunday, November 24, 1963, but no games were televised.
In 2020, the league added contingencies in its schedule similar to those made for the labor dispute in 2011 in case the season had to be delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.