NFL Scheduling Rules

The National Football League has 32 teams divided evenly into two conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC). Each conference has four divisions, East, West, North and South and each division has four teams. The league's scheduling rules are based on this structure. Each team plays 16 games in the regular season: 14 are determined years in advance, and two are determined by a team's performance the previous season.

  1. Division Games

    • Each team plays every other team in its division twice--once as the home team and once as the visitor. This accounts for six games. Take as an example the 2010 New Orleans Saints, who opened the season as the defending Super Bowl champions. The Saints play in the NFC South, so their schedule always includes two games against the Carolina Panthers, two against the Atlanta Falcons and two against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

    Inter-Division Games

    • Each year, a team also plays games against every team in one other division in its own conference; these match-ups rotate every year. This accounts for four games. In 2008, for example, NFC South teams played every team in the NFC North; in 2009, they played every team in the NFC East. In 2010, the rotation had NFC South teams playing every team in the NFC West. That means the Saints had games against the San Francisco 49ers, Arizona Cardinals, St. Louis Rams and Seattle Seahawks. Two of those games, against Seattle and St. Louis, were at home. The next time the NFC South and West are paired up, in 2013, the Saints will play Arizona and San Francisco at home.

    Inter-Conference Games

    • Each division is also paired with a division in the other conference; and these match-ups also rotate every year. This accounts for four games. In 2010, the NFC South was paired with the AFC North, so the Saints had games against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals. The games against Pittsburgh and Cleveland were at home; the next time the Saints play the AFC North, in 2014, the games against Baltimore and Cincinnati will be at home.

    Performance-Based Games

    • The remaining two games are determined by a team's finishing place in its division the previous year. If it won its division, it will play two other first-place teams from its conference. If it finished second, it will play two other second-place teams from its conference, and so on. The Saints finished first in 2009; that meant it had to play two of the three other NFC division winners: the Minnesota Vikings (NFC North), Dallas Cowboys (NFC East) and Arizona Cardinals (NFC West). The Saints were already going to be playing the Cardinals as part of the NFC South-NFC West matchup, so their final two games became Dallas and Minnesota. Home teams in such games are decided by the league office.