2016 NFL Season
From Iwe
| 2016 National Football League season | ||||
| Regular season | ||||
| Duration | September 8, 2016–January 1, 2017 | |||
| Playoffs | ||||
| Start date | January 7, 2017 | |||
| Super Bowl LI | ||||
| Date | February 5, 2017 | |||
| Site | NRG Stadium, Houston, Texas | |||
| Pro Brawl | ||||
| Date | January 29, 2017 | |||
| Site | Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Florida | |||
| ||||
The 2016 NFL season, the 97th season in the history of the National Football League (NFL), is scheduled to begin on Thursday, September 8, 2016, with the annual kickoff game featuring the defending Super Bowl 50 champion Denver Broncos hosting the Carolina Panthers. The season will conclude with Super Bowl LI, the league's championship game, on Sunday, February 5, 2017, at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas.
For the first time since the Houston Oilers relocated to Tennessee in 1997, an NFL team relocated from one state to another, as the former St. Louis Rams moved out of St. Louis, Missouri and returned to Los Angeles, California, its home from 1946 to 1994.
Player movements and retirements
Free agency
Trades
Draft
- Details: 2016 NFL Draft
The 2016 NFL Draft was held between April 28 − April 30, 2016 in Chicago. By way of a trade with the Tennessee Titans, the Los Angeles Rams held the first overall pick and selected QB Jared Goff.
Notable retirements
Preseason
Regular season
The 2016 regular season will feature 256 games to be played out over a seventeen-week schedule which begins on Thursday, September 8, 2016. Each of the league's 32 teams will play a 16-game schedule, with one bye week for each team scheduled between weeks four and eleven. The slate will also feature games on Monday night. There will be games played on Thursday, including the National Football League Kickoff game in prime time on September 8 and games on Thanksgiving Day. The regular season concludes with a full slate of 16 games on Sunday, January 1, 2017, all of which are will be intra-divisional matchups, as it has been since 2010.
- Scheduling formula
Under the NFL's current scheduling formula, each team plays each of the other three teams in their own division twice. In addition, a team plays against all four teams in one other division from each conference. The final two games on a team's schedule are against the two teams in the team's own conference in the divisions the team was not set to play who finished the previous season in the same rank in their division (e.g. the team which finished first in its division the previous season would play each other team in their conference that also finished first in its respective division). The pre-set division pairings for 2016 will be as follows:
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Intra-conference |
Inter-conference |
Postseason
Notable events
2016 deaths
Buddy Ryan
Other notable deaths
Rule changes
Head coach/front office personnel changes
Head coach
Offseason
| Team | 2015 Head Coach | 2015 Interim | 2016 Replacement | Reason for Leaving | Notes |
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Front office
Offseason
| Team | Position | 2015 Office Holder | 2015 Interim | 2016 Replacement | Reason for Leaving | Notes |
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Stadiums
Atlanta Falcons
Minnesota Vikings
Relocation of the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles
- Main article: History of the National Football League in Los Angeles
Rams bid for Los Angeles
- Main article: City of Champions Stadium
Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers failed stadium bid
Main article: Carson Stadium
