When Does the NFL Season Start?
The NFL season begins the week of September 10th.
You can find the full schedule here.
Introduction
National Football League (NFL) is America’s top professional American football league. Comprising 32 teams divided equally between the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC), the NFL is one of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, and the highest professional level of American football in the world.
The Pre-Season
The NFL Pre-Season consists of four exhibition games that are used to help determine which players will make the final 53-man roster. These games are typically played in August.
During the Pre-Season, NFL teams play to win, but the primary focus is on player evaluation. Starters usually play for only a few series, and many players who will not make the final roster see significant playing time.
The Regular Season
The regular season begins the weekend following Labor Day (the first Monday in September), and ends in December or early January. Each team plays 16 games during the regular season.
The Post-Season
The post-season generally lasts three weeks and culminates with the Super Bowl, the league’s championship game. NFL post-season games are not divisional rivalries or conference rivalries, but are instead played between the winners of each conference’s divisions. Since 2008, the NFL has used a “wild card” system for its post-season, where each conference’s four division winners and two wild card teams (the two remaining teams with the best regular-season records) square off in a single-elimination tournament. The four division winners of each conference are seeded 1–4 based on their overall won-lost-tied record, with the top seed hosting the bottom seed in each round. In the first round, dubbed the wild-card playoffs or wild-card weekend, the third seed hosts the sixth seed and the fourth seed hosts the fifth seed in two very competitive games. The 1 and 2 seeds from each conference then receive a bye in that round. In the next round, dubbed Divisional playoffs, the division winners play against each other in another set of two very competitive games. The two surviving teams from each conference’s divisional playoff games then meet in Conference Championships to determine televised by networks that hold broadcast rights to NFL games—all playoff games are aired on national television. The Super Bowl is then played between those two survivors.
Conclusion
The NFL season usually starts in early September, but the exact date varies from year to year. The regular season typically lasts until late December or early January, and the playoffs typically last until mid-January.
