NFL regular season

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The NFL regular season has opened with a Thursday night kickoff game since the 5th of September 2002. That night, the San Francisco 49ers played the New York Giants. The game largely celebrated New York City's resilience after the attacks of the 11th of September 2001. Since 2004, the league has said the opener will normally go to the defending Super Bowl champions, as the official start of their title defense.

  Behind that opening night sits a large puzzle. Every team in the league must be matched with opponents, slotted into specific hours of specific days, and handed to a broadcaster. All of it has to survive baseball playoffs, hurricanes and strikes. So who decides which teams meet, and why do some rivals go years without playing? Who gets to watch each game? And why has the number of games per team changed so many times?

  8333

• 2. The Weekly Rhythm

  ›

  A full season holds 272 games. Each of the league's 32 teams plays 17 of them across 18 weeks, one of which is a bye. Play starts on the weekend after the Labor Day holiday and ends in early January, when the playoffs begin. The calendar moves the start around. If the 1st of September is a Monday, the season can begin on the 4th. If it is a Tuesday, the start can slip to the 10th.

  Since 2012, the league has filled five regular windows each week. Thursday night opens the week at 8:15 pm Eastern, or 8:20 pm for the kickoff game and the Thanksgiving games. Sunday carries most of the load, mostly at 1 pm Eastern, with a late afternoon block at 4:05 or 4:25. Sunday night follows at 8:20, and one or two Monday night games start at 8:15. A second Monday game starts at either 7:30 or 9 pm.

  Thursday football has an uneven pedigree. Detroit has hosted a Thanksgiving game since 1920, and Dallas joined in 1966. Regular Thursday night games began in 2002. From 2006 the league added more of them, first only after Thanksgiving and then, from 2012, in nearly every week. A Black Friday afternoon game joined the calendar in 2023.

  The other prime-time slots are older. Monday Night Football has been a fixture since 1970, and Sunday night games have been regular since 1987. Saturday games late in the season have appeared every year since 1970 except 2013. The league stopped playing a Monday night game in the final week after the 2002 season. Ratings were low, and playoff teams would have had one less day of rest before the postseason.

  Local customs once shaped the Sunday clock too. Before 1982, games hosted in the Central Time Zone mostly kicked off at 2:00 pm Eastern. The Baltimore Colts also played at 2:00 pm Eastern because of Maryland's blue laws. Those laws were later modified, and the Baltimore Ravens have played at 1:00 pm Eastern since their first season in 1996.

  2673316

• 3. Who Gets to Watch

  ›

  In any local television market, three Sunday afternoon games reach viewers, and a household can see at most two in a single window. The remaining games are sold separately through a premium package called NFL Sunday Ticket. CBS holds the rights for teams in the American Football Conference, and Fox holds them for the National Football Conference. When the two conferences meet, the network that owns the rights to the visiting team gets the game.

  One of the two networks shows a doubleheader on most Sundays, while the other shows a single game. They usually alternate roles, though not always. In weeks 1 and 18, both networks run doubleheaders. The single-game network starts its late game at 4:05 pm Eastern, and the second game of a doubleheader begins at 4:25. That gap reduces the chance of overlap with 1:00 pm games that run long.

  Prime time is divided among other partners. NBC carries Sunday night, along with the kickoff game and the Thanksgiving night game. ESPN and ABC share Monday night, and Amazon Prime Video carries Thursday night and the Black Friday game.

  The legal footing for all this dates to 1961, when Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act. A court had ruled that the league's way of negotiating television rights broke antitrust law. The act let the league sell the rights to every regular season and postseason game to the networks. In exchange, it barred the league from competing directly with high school and college football. Those teams play on Fridays and Saturdays, so the NFL stays off those days until their seasons end in mid-December.

  Since 2006, the league has also used flexible scheduling. It lets a regional Sunday afternoon game move into the Sunday night slot for a national audience. At first it applied to the last seven weeks of the regular season. In 2014 it widened to weeks 5 through 17, and since 2022 it has reached Monday nights in weeks 12 through 17. In 2023 and 2024 it even covered Thursday nights in weeks 13 through 17.

  1245

• 4. The Opponent Formula

  ›

  Between 2003 and 2012, the Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots met every single season, even though they sit in different divisions. The cause was the schedule formula. Both clubs kept finishing first, and finishing position helps decide some opponents. The Jets and Browns met every year from 2015 to 2020 for the opposite reason, because both kept landing in fourth place.

  Each team's 17 games break into five groups. Six are against its three division rivals, one at home and one away for each. Four come against a division from its own conference, chosen on a three-year rotation. Two more are against teams from the other two divisions in the conference that finished in the same place the year before. Four are against a division from the other conference on a four-year rotation. The final game is an extra interconference matchup, drawn from the division the team played two years earlier and chosen by last season's standings.

  The Seattle Seahawks show how it works. They finished first in the NFC West in 2025, so in 2026 they face each division rival twice. They also play the NFC East and AFC West once each, plus the first-place teams from the NFC North, NFC South and AFC East.

  The rotations come with promises. Every team meets every other team in its conference at least once every three years. Teams from the other conference meet at least once every four. Within a division, all four teams share 14 of their 17 opponents or play each other.

  Home and away status follows its own rotation, built to alternate over the years. The league adjusted it in 2010 after several eastern clubs, including the Patriots and Jets, had to make four cross-country trips in one season. Their destinations were San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle.

  The formula only names opponents. Dates and times usually arrive in the spring, because the league needs months to balance its other goals. It tries to avoid long home or road stretches, uneven rest between opponents, and weak television ratings. Since 2010, the final week has featured only divisional games, to discourage playoff-bound teams from resting their starters.

  910111213

• 5. Older Formulas

  ›

  Between 1970 and 2002, the Denver Broncos and Miami Dolphins played each other just six times. They met only once between 1976 and 1997, and a 1987 game was cancelled. The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs met four times in that period, and not at all between 1973 and 1991. Those gaps were products of older schedule rules.

  After the 1970 merger, East division teams played eight division games, while Central and West teams played six. Interconference opponents came from cycles that repeated every thirteen seasons. Two expansion clubs added a twist in 1976. Seattle began in the NFC West and Tampa Bay in the AFC West. Each played the 13 other teams in its own conference once, plus one game against each other. In 1977, Seattle moved to the AFC West and Tampa Bay to the NFC Central, and each repeated the pattern in its new conference.

  In 1978, the league scrapped the system because opponents fixed years ahead had produced large gaps in strength of schedule. Non-division conference opponents were now picked by the previous year's finish. A last-place team in a five-team division got a special schedule. It drew other last-place clubs, plus every team in a four-team division in its conference. The 1990 New England Patriots finished last in the AFC East. The next year they played each AFC Central team once and the last-place AFC West team twice. They also met the last-place teams from the NFC East and NFC Central. Outside the AFC Central and NFC West, teams did not necessarily meet outside their division on any regular basis.

  Between 1995 and 1998, six divisions of five teams each made the league completely balanced. That happened at no other point between the merger and 2002. Each team played its four division rivals twice, for eight games, plus rotating opponents elsewhere. Balance did not last. From 1999 to 2001, the AFC Central had six teams, partly because of the Cleveland Browns relocation controversy. Those teams played ten intradivision games in a 16-game schedule.

  1119202223

• 6. Longer Seasons

  ›

  In its early years, the NFL had no set schedule. Teams played anywhere from one to sixteen games, many against independent professional, college or amateur opponents. The league later settled on eleven to fourteen games depending on its size, and then on twelve games per team. The American Football League broke that pattern when it began play in 1960. Its eight teams each played the others twice, for 14 games over a fifteen-week season with one bye. Competition from the new league pushed the NFL to adopt a fourteen-game schedule as well.

  For years the NFL played fourteen games in fourteen weeks, with six or seven exhibition games. In 1966 and 1960, the league had an odd number of franchises, so one team sat idle each week. Later it moved to sixteen regular season games and four exhibition games. From 1978, those sixteen games were spread over sixteen weeks.

  Next came the return of the bye week, which had been absent since 1966. Each team played sixteen games over seventeen weeks, and opening weekend moved up to Labor Day weekend. During a stretch when the league had 31 teams, some team had to rest every week. The league later experimented with a second bye for each team, which produced an 18-week season. The seventeenth game came later still.

  Getting there was a fight. A proposal for a longer season was defeated in the 2011 labor negotiations, and the 2011 collective bargaining agreement kept sixteen games. Ideas floated for the extra games included having every team play abroad each year. Houston Texans owner Bob McNair suggested turning preseason regional rivalries, such as the Governor's Cups, into permanent annual games. The players' association opposed a longer season, largely over injury concerns.

  The 2020 agreement finally allowed seventeen games, and team owners voted in March 2021 to start with that season. The extra game is an interconference matchup. AFC teams host it in odd-numbered years and NFC teams host it in even-numbered years. The league has kept pushing for 18 games, but the current agreement caps the season at 17 until it expires in 2031.

  2124282943

• 7. Games Abroad

  ›

  The first regular season NFL game outside the United States was played in Mexico City in 2005. The Arizona Cardinals met the San Francisco 49ers. In October 2006, club owners approved up to two international games per season, starting in 2007 and running through at least 2011. The first was on the 28th of October 2007 at Wembley Stadium in London, where the New York Giants played the Miami Dolphins.

  London became a regular stop. On the 26th of October 2008, the San Diego Chargers met the nominal home team, the New Orleans Saints, at Wembley. On the 25th of October 2009, the New England Patriots beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 35-7. The long-term plan was a 16-year rotation in which every team would play abroad twice, once as host and once as visitor.

  That plan was abandoned when the St. Louis Rams, who shared ownership with the London soccer club Arsenal, signed a three-year agreement to be the London home team. The rotation was later revived after the Rams said they would not return to England in 2013. The Rams came back as hosts in 2016.

  Other clubs found their own overseas homes. The Jacksonville Jaguars agreed to play one home game a season at Wembley through 2016, and the deal was later extended to 2020. Their first game was against the 49ers, who won comfortably. A record three London games were announced for the 2014 season.

  Closer to home, the Buffalo Bills played one regular season game a year in Toronto from 2008 through 2013, plus two preseason games. Poor ticket sales and anger among Buffalo fans ended the series in 2014, and the death of Bills owner Ralph Wilson played a part. From the 2022 season, each team will host at least one international game every eight years. The labor agreement caps international games at ten per season until the 2025 season.

  3435363942

• 8. When the Schedule Breaks

  ›

  In 1973, the New York Jets played their first six games on the road because the Mets, who shared Shea Stadium, reached the World Series. A home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers moved to Pittsburgh. Baseball leases gave Major League Baseball teams priority in shared stadiums. The league therefore often rescheduled October games on short notice, sometimes to a Saturday or Monday. That problem faded as baseball teams moved into their own ballparks, and since 2020 no stadium has hosted both an NFL and an MLB team.

  Overlap has not vanished. Nine NFL and MLB venues share parking lots, so the league usually keeps those football teams on the road when the baseball team is home. The Super Bowl XLVII champion Baltimore Ravens had to open on the road. The Baltimore Orioles were at home on kickoff day and declined to move their game.

  Labor fights cost games too. The 1982 strike lasted 57 days and wiped out weeks 3 through 10, leaving a 9-game schedule. The 1987 strike and lockout lasted 24 days, and non-union replacement players filled weeks 4 through 6, giving each team 15 games. Later schedules were built to survive a dispute. Weeks 2 and 4 had no division games, and week 3 matchups could be moved into bye weeks.

  Weather and disaster have repeatedly forced moves. The Loma Prieta earthquake damaged Candlestick Park in 1989, so the 49ers hosted the Patriots at Stanford Stadium. Hurricane Katrina damaged the Louisiana Superdome days before the 2005 season. The Saints' eight home games moved elsewhere, including Giants Stadium, the Alamodome and Tiger Stadium at Louisiana State University. Hurricane Ike delayed a Texans game against the Ravens from the 14th of September 2008 to the 9th of November. Hurricane Ida forced the Saints' 2021 opener against the Green Bay Packers to Jacksonville.

  On the 12th of December 2010, the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis collapsed under heavy snow. The Vikings' last two home games moved to Ford Field in Detroit and to the University of Minnesota's stadium. A Nor'easter also postponed a Vikings-Eagles game from Sunday the 26th of December to Tuesday the 28th. Snow in western New York moved a Bills game to Detroit in 2014 and again in 2022.

  Grief and crisis have reshaped the calendar as well. The AFL postponed its games after President Kennedy was assassinated on Friday the 22nd of November 1963. The NFL played on Sunday the 24th, but no games were televised. After the 2001 attacks, Week 2 was pushed to the 6th and the 7th of January 2002, and the Super Bowl slid back a week. That cost the league its bye week before the Super Bowl for two seasons. For the COVID-19 pandemic, the league built a fallback in which weeks 3 and 4 could be cancelled without losing a divisional game. That fallback would have allowed a 14-game season starting on the 29th of October.

  4546474950