The National Football League preseason is the period each year during which NFL teams play several friendly exhibition games before the regular season starts. Beginning with the featured Pro Football Hall of Fame game in early August, three weekends of exhibition games are played in the NFL to date. The start of the preseason is intrinsically tied to the last week of training camp.
History Exhibition games have been played in professional football since the beginning of the sport. In fact, until league play was formalized in 1920, one could consider virtually all of an independent professional football team's schedule to be exhibitions (as in test matches). In the early years of the sport, teams often "barnstormed", and played squads from leagues outside their own, or against local college teams or other amateur groups, charging fans whatever the traffic would bear.
When the NFL was founded in 1920, all games counted in the standings and would be used to determine the league champion. In 1921, this was revised to only count games involving two league members, thus allowing non-league exhibitions, but effectively banning exhibitions between two league teams. This rule had a direct impact on deciding the 1921 championship, in which the losing team insisted that the deciding game only be considered an exhibition.
In 1924, the league again changed the rule to declare any games held in December or later to be exhibitions. By the mid-1930s, teams prepared for a standard 12-game regular season schedule, although even as late as 1939 teams would schedule non-league exhibition games both before and during the season (during bye weeks). The Pittsburgh Steelers (then known as the Pirates) were well known for playing both in the NFL and on a limited schedule in the decades-old Western Pennsylvania circuit in the 1930s.
In the 1960s, teams began playing 14 regular season games, with a corresponding decrease in the length of the preseason. Teams played four or five preseason games each year; for example, in 1966 each of the nine American Football League teams each played four preseason games. By the end of the decade, however, there would be a rapid increase in the number of preseason games.
With the AFL–NFL merger of 1970, the newly merged NFL was granted a Sherman Anti-Trust Act exemption, which emboldened some team owners to expand the exhibition schedule and to require season-ticket holders to pay for one, then two, then three home exhibition games if they wanted to keep their season tickets.
From 1970 through 1977, the NFL season consisted of 14 regular season games and six exhibition games, sometimes but not always three at home and three away (the 1974 Washington Redskins, for instance, played all but one of six preseason games at home), with some played at neutral sites. From to , the regular season was lengthened to 16 games, and the exhibition season was cut from six to four games.
From 1999 to 2001, when the league consisted of an uneven 31 teams, some additional exhibition games (usually two or three) were played over Hall of Fame weekend. In order to account for the uneven number of teams, each team was required to have a bye week during the exhibition season. Most teams held their bye week in Hall of Fame weekend, while the others utilized them somewhere else during the exhibition season. This practice was abandoned after the Houston Texans were added to the league in 2002, giving it an even 32 teams.
The 2020 preseason was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, a rule change was enacted that abolished overtime in preseason games, the first time since . Additionally, with the expansion of the regular season to seventeen games and eighteen weeks, the preseason was reduced to three games (though the teams that play in the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game still play 4 preseason games). That same year, the Baltimore Ravens and John Harbaugh claimed the record of consecutive preseason wins with 20, overtaking Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers record.
Scheduling Unlike the regular season, the exhibition matchups are not based on any rotating or set formula.
The NFL schedules the matchups for all of the exhibition games. Since 2002, individual teams have been allowed to negotiate their own deals to play each other during the preseason: the league allows individual teams to provide input into desired matchups and determines the matchups for any games that were not individually negotiated, while the league sets all game dates and times.
The exhibition season schedule is released in the spring, shortly before the regular season schedule is announced. The NFL has set a loose precedent of determining exhibition matchups:
No two teams have faced each other in the same exhibition season more than once since 2001, when Dallas and Oakland played twice. No NFL team has played any team outside the league since 1976. Teams in the same division usually do not play one another during the exhibition season: the last intra-division preseason matchup occurred in 2000. Interconference game (AFC vs. NFC) matchups are common and encouraged, since regular season matchups between interconference teams are infrequent, with teams generally playing other-conference teams only once every four years during the regular season. These games allow teams to travel to particular markets more frequently than normal, and represent "fresh" matchups. Geographically close matchups are preferred, to provide teams with minimal (if possible) exhibition season travel. As such, intrastate rivals are frequent matchups, provided they are not already division foes: Giants/Jets (the MetLife Bowl), Ravens/Commanders (Battle of the Beltways), Bucs/Dolphins/Jaguars, and Chargers/Rams (Battle for Los Angeles) are all frequent exhibition matchups. The Broncos and Cardinals, the only two teams in the Mountain Time Zone, also play every preseason (though due to Arizona's non-observance of daylight saving time, Denver is one hour ahead of Arizona during the NFL preseason, which occurs in August). The Eagles and Jets have concluded the preseason by playing each other annually since 2001, due to close proximity. Teams with close personal ties often play each other. Since 2005, the Giants and the Patriots close out their preseason together, as the owners of the two teams are friends. The Steelers and the Panthers, from 2003 to 2021, closed out their preseason together despite a distance between Pittsburgh and Charlotte. There are numerous Pittsburgh-area ties to the Panthers organization, including former head coach John Fox (a former assistant at Pitt and the Steelers), ex-Steeler linebackers Greg Lloyd and Kevin Greene finishing out their careers at Carolina, former Steelers safety Donnie Shell having served as the Panthers Director of Player Development from 1994 to 2009, and former Steelers minority owner & East Liberty native David Tepper becoming majority owner of the Panthers. On the flip side, former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher attended N.C. State and moved to Raleigh for a time after retirement. Former Steelers players Willie Parker and Jeff Reed both attended UNC. This also reflects on the increasing number of western Pennsylvania natives in relocating to the Carolinas. Their preseason matchups have decreased since the increase in regular season games to 17, though they did resume meeting in the preseason in 2025. The Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions often play each other in the preseason, as a tribute to late Bills owner Ralph Wilson, who was a native of Detroit, and at one point owned a share of the Lions. In addition, both Buffalo and Detroit are the only NFL cities that border Canada, with each city located on opposite sides of Southern Ontario. Along with general in-state rivalries, some long-established "Governor's Cups" are played annually. Texas – Dallas Cowboys vs. Houston Texans (since 2002, Cowboys vs. Houston Oilers from 1967 to 1996) Pennsylvania – Philadelphia Eagles vs. Pittsburgh Steelers Missouri – Kansas City vs. St. Louis (currently suspended due to a lack of a team in St. Louis: Chiefs vs. Cardinals from 1970 to 1987 and Chiefs vs. Rams from 1995 to 2015) After the division realignment in 2002, the NFL factors in former division rivalries which were broken due to teams moving to different divisions if possible. For a five-year period from 2002 to 2006, the league had the authority to schedule former division rivals for exhibition games (the Cardinals and Seattle Seahawks, who were switched from the NFC East and AFC West, respectively, to the NFC West, are the most notable examples). It was a move intended to recover potentially lost revenue due to the end of a popular annual rivalry game. In some rare cases, the league has scheduled "hot" regular-season matchups if they did not happen to be scheduled to play that season. For instance, Tampa Bay and St. Louis had a popular mini-rivalry from 1999 to 2004. The teams were not scheduled to play one another in 2003, so the league reacted by scheduling a Monday night preseason game for them that season. The Tennessee Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers are former division rivals in the old AFC Central. 2018 was the first time the two teams met in the preseason since the Titans became a member of the AFC South and the Steelers became a member of the AFC North. The Detroit Lions and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are former division rivals in the old NFC Central. 2018 was the first time the two teams met in the preseason since the Lions became a member of the NFC North and the Buccaneers became a member of the NFC South. The Seattle Seahawks and Green Bay Packers got scheduled to play each other in the 2013 preseason in a rematch of Fail Mary. Both teams were not scheduled to play each other in the 2013 regular season. Teams that have joint practices together get scheduled to play each other in a preseason game.
The teams that play in the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game are determined solely by the league (and the Hall of Fame committee), featuring one AFC team and one NFC team. Its matchup is announced well in advance, around the time of the Super Bowl, when the Hall of Fame inductees are announced. Under some circumstances, the matchup is planned well into the future. For example, the Buccaneers played the Steelers in the 1998 Hall of Fame Game, a matchup that had been announced in 1983. In recent times, if there has been an expansion team added to the league, that team will be invited to play in the Hall of Fame game (Carolina, Jacksonville, the new Cleveland Browns, and Houston all played in their expansion seasons in 1995, 1999, and 2002 respectively). The 2009 game, however, was between two original American Football League teams: the Buffalo Bills and the Tennessee Titans (formerly the Houston Oilers). This matchup was announced after Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., an AFL founder and the only owner ever of the Bills, was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on February 1, 2009, while the late Titans' owner, Bud Adams, was also the only owner his team had to that time. Wilson and Adams were also the two last surviving members of the original AFL ownership cabal and are two of the only three men who have majority-owned a professional football franchise continuously for fifty years or more (the late George Halas, who owned the Chicago Bears from 1920 to 1983, is the third). The Hall of Fame game served as a kickoff to the 2009 season, which would have been the 50th season of play for the AFL had it survived as an independent entity. The 2011 (canceled), 2012, 2016 (canceled), and 2026 games were between two NFC teams. Normally, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game has an AFC and NFC matchup, but that is not always the case.