Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How many games does an NFL team play in a season?
In its early years after , the NFL did not have a set schedule, and teams played as few as eight and as many as sixteen games, many against independent professional, college, or amateur teams. From through , they played from eleven to fourteen games per season, depending on the number of teams in the league. From through , each NFL team played 12 games per season. The American Football League began play in 1960 and introduced a balanced schedule of 14 games per team over a fifteen-week season, in which each of the eight teams played each of the other teams twice, with one bye week. Competition from the new league caused the NFL to expand and follow suit with a fourteen-game schedule in .
There have been proposals to expand the regular season schedule to 17 or 18 games per team. Current Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he favors expanding it to 18 games. However, a longer regular season proposal was defeated in the 2011 labor negotiations between the owners and the players association. One of the proposals for the 17th and 18th games is to have every team play at least one game abroad every year. Another idea being put forth by Houston Texans owner Bob McNair is 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. The NFL Players' Association opposes extending the season, largely because of injury concerns, and extending the season would require that such an extension be included in the next collective bargaining agreement. The collective bargaining agreement signed in 2011 maintained the sixteen game regular season schedule.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 and Public Law 89-800, which govern the antitrust exemptions given to the National Football League, prohibit the broadcasting of NFL games within 75 miles of any high school football game on Friday nights between September and early December. Because most populated areas of the United States have at least one high school football game within a 75-mile radius, and because broadcasting is an integral part of the NFL's business model (roughly half of the league's revenue comes from television contracts), this effectively prohibits the playing of NFL games in competition with high school football. (These rules do not apply during preseason, when Friday night games are common, nor does it apply at the end of the season, though the only time regular season games are played on Friday in the NFL is on Christmas.) Only recently have national sports television channels fully capitalized on this rule; since 2005, the ESPN family of networks (usually the sub-networks ESPN2, ESPNU and online broadcaster ESPN3, although the main channel also shows occasional games) has aired regular season matchups between nationally ranked teams under the "High School Showcase" banner. Fox Sports 1 also included high school football in its lineup when it launched in 2013.
Game play in American football consists of a series of "downs", individual plays of short duration, outside of which the ball is "dead" or not in play. These can be plays from scrimmage – passes, runs, punts, or field goal attempts (from either a place kick or a drop kick) – or free kicks such as kickoffs and fair catch kicks. Substitutions can be made between downs, which allows for a great deal of specialization as coaches choose the players best suited for each particular situation. During a play, each team should have no more than 11 players on the field, and each of them has specific tasks assigned for that specific play.
NBC broadcast the first televised National Football League (NFL) game when they carried the 22 October 1939 game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The same year, the first nationwide radio broadcast of an NFL championship game was carried on the Mutual Broadcasting System. While the NFL had weak television deals that ranked behind college football and even the Canadian Football League in the 1950s, the broadcast rights of the NFL would go on to become an important property following the 1958 NFL Championship and the later establishment of the American Football League in 1960. "Monday Night Football", "NFL on Fox", and "NBC Sunday Night Football" have changed the landscape of American football broadcasts, including the scheduling of the Super Bowl, transforming it from an afternoon broadcast into a primetime spectacle. The price for the NFL's broadcast rights has increased steadily over the past several decades, in part because of bidding wars between the numerous networks and the fear of losing stature due to the loss of NFL programming; as of the most recent contract the league nets annual fees of over $6 billion, or half of the league's overall revenue, from television rights alone. Four of the five major sports television units in the United States, and the four companies that control all of the major broadcast networks, currently own some NFL rights.
From the beginnings of the NFL, some teams shared stadiums with Major League Baseball teams, with the MLB teams holding leases giving them priority. The NFL was required to schedule around September baseball games. In October, this frequently resulted in NFL teams having to reschedule on short notice if the MLB team in their city made the playoffs. On some occasions, the NFL game could be moved to Saturday or Monday. The NFL would often schedule October division games so that teams would be able to swap home game dates if it appeared that the MLB playoff schedule would make a stadium unavailable to the NFL. Perhaps the most extreme case was in 1973, when the New York Jets played at Shea Stadium and were forced to play their first six games on the road due to the Mets playing in the World Series.
At all adult levels of the game, a game is 60 timed minutes in length, split into four 15-minute quarters. (High school football uses 12-minute quarters, and the general rule is that the younger the players, the shorter the quarters typically are.) Because of the halftime, quarter breaks, time-outs, the minute warnings (two minutes before the end of a half in the NFL, three minutes in Canadian football), and frequent stoppages of the game clock (the clock stops, for example, after every incomplete pass and any time a ball goes out of bounds), the actual time it takes for a football game to be completed is typically over three hours.
Gridiron football does not operate on a league system. Different professional leagues play by very different sets of rules in different seasons (the NFL plays 11-a-side on a 100-yard field in autumn and early winter, the CFL uses 12-a-side on a 110-yard field in summer and early fall, while arena football and the minor indoor leagues each play 8-a-side on a 50-yard field in the spring and early summer). There have been attempts at forming true minor leagues for the professional game (most recently with 2017's The Spring League); none so far have been able to balance the major leagues' requests with the ability to maintain financial solvency.
Football games last for a total of 60 minutes in professional and college play and are divided into two-halves of 30 minutes and four-quarters of 15 minutes. High school football games are 48 minutes in length with two-halves of 24 minutes and four-quarters of 12 minutes. The two-halves are separated by a halftime period, and the first and third quarters are also followed by a short break. Prior to the start of the game, the referee and team captains for each team meet at midfield for a coin toss. The visiting team is allowed to call 'heads' or 'tails'; the winner of the toss is allowed to decide between choosing whether to receive or kick off the ball or choosing which goal they want to defend, but they can also defer their choice until the second half. The losing team, unless the winning team decides to defer, is allowed to choose the option the winning team did not select, and receives the option to receive, kick, or select a goal to defend to begin the second half. Most teams choose to receive or defer, because choosing to kick the ball to start the game would allow the other team to choose which goal to defend. Teams switch goals following the first and third quarters. If a down is in progress when a quarter ends, play continues until the down is completed.
The 2019 NFL season will be the 100th season of the National Football League (NFL). The season will tentatively begin on September 5, 2019, in the home stadium of the Super Bowl LIII champion (either Los Angeles Rams or New England). The season will conclude with Super Bowl LIV, the league's championship game, tentatively scheduled for February 2, 2020, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida.
The 2019 NFL Draft will be held from April 25–27 in Nashville, Tennessee.
The National Football League is the only one of the four major sports leagues that does not have a formalized farm system. The source for almost all NFL players is college football. Drafted players from college immediately join the main team; if they fail to make the regular season roster, a limited number of players may be assigned to the practice squad. NFL teams rarely recruit players from other gridiron football leagues. American football also has the least global reach for prospects, with one exception being several players from other codes of football primarily as kickers and punters. The league's teams backed the World League (later known as NFL Europe) in the 1990s and 2000s, and purchased teams in the Arena Football League for a period in the 2000s.
When the AFL and the NFL officially merged in 1970, the combined league divided its teams into the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). It was then decided (officially announced on January 26, 1970) that CBS would televise all NFC teams (including playoff games) while NBC would carry games from all AFC teams. For interconference games, CBS would broadcast them if the visiting team was from the NFC and NBC would carry them when the visitors were from the AFC. This was in line with the NFL television blackout rules of the time, meaning that every televised game of a local NFL team would be on the same channel (at the time, home games were banned from local television regardless of sell-out status, while road games are required to be aired in the teams' primary media markets, and select neighboring markets as well, even if it is not the most popular team in the market). The two networks also divided up broadcast rights to the Super Bowl on a yearly rotation.
In American football each team has 11 players on the field at one time. The specific role that a player takes on the field is called their "position". Under the modern rules of American football, teams are allowed unlimited substitutions; that is, teams may change any number of players after any play. This has resulted in the development of three "platoons" of players: the offense (the team with the ball, which is trying to score), the defense (the team trying to prevent the other team from scoring, and to take the ball from them), and the special teams (who play in kicking situations). Within those platoons, various specific positions exist depending on what each player's main job is.
The game is regarded as one of the biggest upsets in the history of professional sports, as well as one of the finest Super Bowl games. The Patriots entered the game as 12-point favorites after becoming the first team to complete a perfect regular season since the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and the only one since the league expanded to a 16-game regular season schedule in 1978. The Giants, who finished the regular season with a 10–6 record, were seeking to become the first NFC wild card team to win a Super Bowl, and were also looking for their third Super Bowl victory and first since they won Super Bowl XXV seventeen years earlier. This Super Bowl was also a rematch of the final game of the regular season, in which New England won, 38–35.
The American Football League stands as the only professional football league to successfully compete against the NFL. When the two leagues merged in 1970, all ten AFL franchises and their statistics became part of the new NFL. Every other professional league that had competed against the NFL before the AFL–NFL merger had folded completely: the three previous leagues named "American Football League" and the All-America Football Conference. From an earlier AFL (1936–1937), only the Cleveland Rams (now the Los Angeles Rams) joined the NFL and are currently operating, as are the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers from the AAFC. A third AAFC team, the Baltimore Colts (not related to the 1953–1983 Baltimore Colts or to the current Indianapolis Colts franchise), played only one year in the NFL, disbanding at the end of the 1950 season. The league resulting from the merger was a 26-team juggernaut (since expanded to 32) with television rights covering all of the Big Three television networks and teams in close proximity to almost all of the top 40 metropolitan areas, a fact that has precluded any other competing league from gaining traction since the merger; failed attempts to mimic the AFL's success included the World Football League (1974–75), United States Football League (1983–85), XFL (2001) and United Football League (2009–2012).
Only one professional football league has a permanent presence in Canada: the Canadian Football League (CFL), an organization founded in 1958 to accommodate the ongoing trend of professionalism in the Canadian football ranks since the 1940s. The CFL, like most amateur Canadian football leagues, plays on a larger field using a rulebook with several significant rule differences compared to the game as it is played in the United States. The league is composed of two divisions and nine teams in most of the largest Canadian markets, with at least one team in each province between British Columbia (BC Lions) and Quebec (Montreal Alouettes) inclusive. The only presence in Atlantic Canada is a semi-regular series of games in Moncton (Touchdown Atlantic) and a smattering of earlier preseason contests. The CFL operates a two-week preseason beginning in June, an 18-game season from July to October, and a six-team playoff tournament, culminating in the Grey Cup on the fourth weekend of November.
The regular season is eight to nine weeks long, depending on the conference. Teams play between 12 and 16 regular season games, depending on conference or division, with teams typically playing a home and home series with every other team in their conference or division. All regular season games are in-conference. Following the conclusion of the regular season, the Joe Johnson Memorial Trophy is awarded annually to the Player of the Year in U Sports men's soccer.
In American football since the 1950s, most upper level teams use a three-platoon system, each with its own starting lineup. The starting lineups for offense and defense, each with eleven players, typically get the most attention. The starting lineups are defined as the eleven players who take the first offensive or defensive play from scrimmage of a given game. (An offensive player does not have to be on the team that gets possession first to be considered a starter, nor does a defensive player have to be on the team that does not; the first play from scrimmage after the first change of possession counts as well.) The third platoon, special teams, in modern times is composed mostly of backup and reserve players from the offensive or defensive platoons, with the exception of the placekicker or punter; the players who, for instance, take part in the opening kickoff are typically not considered starters.
The season ended when the Green Bay Packers defeated the New York Giants in the NFL Championship Game.Though both the Giants and the Packers finished a game ahead of their closest division rivals, both clinched their divisions on December 3, the final day of the 11-game regular season. The New York Giants and Washington Redskins had played to a 0–0 tie earlier in the season, and both had 8–1–1 records when they met at New York's Polo Grounds before a crowd of 62,404. The Giants did not reach the end zone, but three field goals were enough for a 9–7 win and the division title.
The 1985 NFL season was the 66th regular season of the National Football League. The season ended with Super Bowl XX when the Chicago Bears defeated the New England Patriots 46–10 at the Louisiana Superdome. The Bears became the second team in NFL history (after the previous season's San Francisco 49ers) to win 15 games in the regular season and 18 including the playoffs."W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, PCT = Winning Percentage, PF= Points For, PA = Points Against"The following players set all-time records during the season:
While there are various semi-professional football leagues, none have any affiliation with the National Football League (NFL). The NFL and its teams have had working relationships with several independent leagues in the past, including the Association of Professional Football Leagues, the Atlantic Coast Football League, and most recently, the league owned-and-operated NFL Europe. In modern times, the NFL has developed players not ready for the active roster through each team's practice squad.
Purely geographic rivalries are rare in the NFL, since crosstown rivals do not play each other nearly as often as in other leagues that have more games (and therefore more opportunities to play other teams). For example, Major League Baseball teams face each league opponent at least six times in the regular season, and within a division as many as 19 times. In recent years, the NFL changed its scheduling formula to ensure every possible matchup happens within a four-year span, not counting pre-season games or the Super Bowl. A main factor in the fact that crosstown rivals are almost always in opposing conferences is history: in the three current markets (New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco Bay Area) that have two NFL teams, all have one team (Jets in New York, Raiders in Oakland, Chargers in Los Angeles) that was a member of the American Football League. As part of the AFL–NFL merger, all AFL teams had to be retained, even if it meant multiple teams in one metropolitan area. The newly merged league opted not to go through an extensive geographical realignment, and instead, the AFL formed the basis of the AFC, and the old NFL formed the basis of the NFC; as a result, each team ended up in an opposite conference from their crosstown rival. This allowed the combined league to retain both existing television partnerships of each league—NBC for the AFL/AFC, and CBS for the NFL/NFC—instead of choosing one or the other (ABC joined the mix in 1970 with "Monday Night Football").
In place since 2006, the current broadcasting contract establishes broadcast partners for each game. The Sunday afternoon games are broadcast either on CBS or Fox. CBS has the broadcast rights for teams in the American Football Conference while Fox has the rights for teams in the National Football Conference. In games where teams from both conferences play each other, the network with the broadcast rights for the "away" team will broadcast the game. In each local television market, three Sunday afternoon games are shown. One of the two networks gets a doubleheader, while the other network has the right to broadcast a single game; the networks alternate weeks when each has the right to the doubleheader. Doubleheader games are broadcast at 1:00 (ET) and 4:25 PM (ET). The network with the single game will have an official kick-off time at either 1:00 PM (ET) or 4:05 PM (ET). In addition to the regular Sunday afternoon games, there are three prime time games each week. The Thursday night game is broadcast by the NFL Network (with, starting in 2018, ten of those Thursday games also being simulcast by Fox). The Sunday night game is broadcast by NBC, while the Monday night game is broadcast by ESPN.
Every NFL team is based in the contiguous United States. Although no team is based in a foreign country, the Jacksonville Jaguars began playing one home game a year at Wembley Stadium in London, England, in 2013 as part of the NFL International Series. The Jaguars' agreement with Wembley was originally set to expire in 2016, but has since been extended through 2020. The Buffalo Bills played one home game every season at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as part of the Bills Toronto Series from to . Mexico also hosted an NFL regular-season game, a 2005 game between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals known as "Fútbol Americano", and 39 international preseason games were played from 1986 to 2005 as part of the American Bowl series. The Raiders and Houston Texans played a game in Mexico City at Estadio Azteca on November 21, 2016.
The NFL preseason begins with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, played at Fawcett Stadium in Canton. Each NFL team is required to schedule four preseason games, two of which must be at its home stadium, but the teams involved in the Hall of Fame game, as well as any teams playing in an American Bowl game, play five preseason games. Preseason games are exhibition matches and do not count towards regular-season totals. Because the preseason does not count towards standings, teams generally do not focus on winning games; instead, they are used by coaches to evaluate their teams and by players to show their performance, both to their current team and to other teams if they get cut. The quality of preseason games has been criticized by some fans, who dislike having to pay full price for exhibition games, as well as by some players and coaches, who dislike the risk of injury the games have, while others have felt the preseason is a necessary part of the NFL season.