Considered to be one of the top four sports leagues in the United States, the NFL has a big place in the hearts of many people. The sport of gridiron football is followed extensively even from high school level. Moreover, college football is almost as big as the professional NFL and it has almost equal fan following as well. But American football, even as great as it is, comes with a lot of limitations especially when it comes to the number of games each team can play.
The entire NFL season is just barely five months long. If you consider the preseason, then the additional three weeks means it is still less than six months of a calendar year. Plus, out of those five months, approximately one month is dedicated to the postseason, meaning a little more that half of teams will not even play for that month. That brings us to the question of how many games do the NFL actually play in that stipulated time?
How many games do each teams play in a season?
If you look at the end of season table for the NFL, you will come to know that the total number of games played by a team in the regular season is just 17. You would probably be wondering how a sports league can have only 17 games in the entire year. Of course, if you factor in the postseason, the maximum number of games that a team may play is still only 21. But why is this the case when most of the major sports leagues play a lot more games throughout the year?
The NFL is a brutal league as it consists of one of the biggest contact sports known to man. The amount of hard physical and mental preparation that is involved in football is staggering. Furthermore, each game takes a huge toll on the body of the players involved in addition to athletes running down a 100 yard field for four quarters with limited time to rest in between.
Every snap of the ball means those on the field are giving their hundred percent on every single play, running hard and making ferocious tackles. Injuries which are part and parcel of all sports are somehow even greater in this league. Being a contact sport, some of the injuries tend to be drastically severe leading to players having to sit out entire seasons.
With so much physicality involved in the game, all teams are limited to one game a week. The NFL has to manage their schedules a bit differently as all players need much more time for their bodies to recover after a grueling game.
FAQs
A. All NFL teams play 17 regular season games in a year in an 18 week stretch. Each team gets one bye week for rest.
A. In one NFL season, there are a total of 272 games as each team plays 17 games.
A. The NFL season lasts for approximately five and a half months including the preseason and the playoffs.
A. The NFLPA, i.e. the NFL Player’s Association has mandated Tuesdays to be the days off from their busy schedules all across the NFL. However, many athletes take this opportunity to still work on their skills, game tapes, conditioning, etc.
