2015 NFL season
| Regular season | |
|---|---|
| Duration | September 10 – January 3, 2016 |
| Playoffs | |
| Start date | January 9, 2016 |
| Super Bowl 50 | |
| Date | February 7, 2016 |
| Site | Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara, California |
| Pro Bowl | |
| Date | January 31, 2016 |
| Site | Aloha Stadium, Honolulu, Hawaii |
The 2015 NFL season will be the 96th season in the history of the National Football League (NFL). The season is scheduled to begin on Thursday, September 10, 2015, with the annual kickoff game featuring the defending Super Bowl XLIX champion against a yet to be named opponent. The season will then conclude with Super Bowl 50,[note 1] the league's championship game, on Sunday, February 7, 2016, at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.[1]
Preseason
Training camps for the 2015 season will be held in late July through August. Teams may start training camp no earlier than 15 days before the team's first scheduled preseason game.
Prior to the start of the regular season, each team will play at least four preseason exhibition games. The preseason schedule will get underway with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game on Sunday evening, August 9. The Hall of Fame game is a traditional part of the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame induction weekend celebrating new Hall of Fame members. It will be played at Fawcett Stadium which is located adjacent to the Hall of Fame building in Canton, Ohio. The game, which will be televised in the U.S. on NBC, and will feature two teams announced at the same time as new Hall of Fame members are announced. The 65-game preseason schedule will end on Thursday, September 3, a week before the start of the regular season.
Regular season
The 2015 regular season will feature 256 games to be played out over a seventeen week schedule which begins on the Thursday night following Labor Day. 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 twelve. 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 10 and games on Thanksgiving Day. The regular season concludes with a full slate of 16 games on Sunday, January 3, all of which, are expected to 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 2015 are as follows:[2]
|
Intra-conference |
Inter-conference |
Highlights of the 2015 schedule include:
- NFL Kickoff Game: The 2015 season will begin on Thursday, September 10, 2015, with the defending Super Bowl champion hosting a yet to be announced team.
- International Series: Three games will be played at Wembley Stadium in London, England in 2015, with two games being played in back-to-back weeks for the first time.[3] The Miami Dolphins will play host to the New York Jets on October 4, the first ever divisional game played in the International Series.[3] The Jacksonville Jaguars will then host the Buffalo Bills on October 25, in the third of four consecutive home game for the Jaguars in the International Series. Finally, the Kansas City Chiefs will host the Detroit Lions on November 1.[3]
- Thanksgiving Day games: These games will occur on Thursday, November 26, 2015. Dallas and Detroit will traditionally each host a game along with a third as yet unannounced contest.
Stadiums
This will be the Minnesota Vikings final season at TCF Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus before moving to their new stadium in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Postseason
The playoffs will begin with the Wild Card playoff round on the weekend of January 9–10, 2015. The divisional round games will then be played on the weekend of January 16–17, and the conference championships on January 24.
Super Bowl 50 will decide the 2015 NFL champion on February 7, 2016, at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Instead of naming it Super Bowl L with Roman numerals like in previous Super Bowls, this game will be marketed with the Arabic numeral "50".[1] According to Jaime Weston, the league's vice president of brand and creative, the primary reason was that the league's graphic designers had difficulty designing a suitable, aesthetically pleasing logo with only the letter "L".[1]
Uniforms
The Tennessee Titans will switch their primary colored jerseys from light "Titans Blue" to navy blue, the latter of which was the team's primary home jersey color from 1999–2007. Tommy Smith, who was named the Titans' President and CEO following the death of longtime owner Bud Adams in 2013, stated that the light "Titans Blue" jerseys were being phased out.[4]
Notes
- ^ For this Super Bowl only, the league will use the Arabic numeral "50" instead of the Roman numeral "L". See the postseason section for details.
References
- ^ a b c Rovell, Darren (June 4, 2014). "NFL: It's Super Bowl 50, not L". ESPN.com. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
- ^ "Scheduling Forumla". NFL Record & Fact Book 2015. NFL. p. 16. ISBN 978-1618933942.
- ^ a b c "NFL announces 2015 International Series lineup". NFL.com. November 6, 2015. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
- ^ Wyatt, Jim (November 21, 2014). "Titans will stick with white jerseys". The Tennessean. Retrieved November 21, 2014.