History of NFL rescheduled, relocated, and canceled games

The NFL maintains a fairly rigid schedule. A given year’s slate of matchups and locations are decided by preset rotations and formulas,¹The current scheduling formulas and rotations date back to 2002, with a minor revision in 2021 to add a 17th game. Pre-1970 schedules were more ad hoc. sites and dates of those matchups are set by the league office in the spring,²The 2020 schedule was released on May 7 after being delayed several weeks by the pandemic. Typically, the schedule is released in mid-April. and 99% of the time, those games have taken place where and when they’ve been planned, although in recent years, a fair amount of same-day time shifting has occurred in-season to maximize television viewership.

The other 1% of the time,³More accurately, 1.79% as of the date this article was originally posted, boosted heavily by the 1982 players strike. something went wrong, causing games from that carefully planned schedule to be shifted. Sometimes it’s been something as innocuous as a pre-existing stadium conflict; other times as dark as a national tragedy.

And sometimes, games were moved because of … jazz.⁴Note that Chuck Mangione is billed before Ray Charles.

Stadium conflicts

For the first 100 years of NFL history, some NFL teams shared stadiums with their local Major League baseball franchise.⁵There are no current football/baseball co-tenants now that the Raiders have moved to Las Vegas. Generally speaking, the baseball team had priority over the stadium,⁶The Houston Astros were an exception, so the sites in the 1986 National League Championship Series were swapped to accommodate an Oilers home game. so if the baseball team made the playoffs, the football team was moved to alternate dates and/or sites, either due to a direct date conflict or to preserve the field. Outside of player strikes, this has led to the largest number of rescheduled NFL games.

Less commonly, the NFL simply forgot that a stadium had already been booked when they made the schedule. In these cases, the NFL typically tried to bigfoot the early booker out of the date, only to eventually back down and reschedule after many refusals.

Stadium issues

Sometimes, the planned stadium has not been ready for some football, whether because a previous event damaged the grass, construction was not finished, or the roof was falling. Usually, these games were shifted to other stadiums in the area.

Weather

Although football is noted for being played in all sorts of weather, this was not always the case. While championship games like the 1948 Philadelphia snowstorm and the 1967 Ice Bowl were played in the most adverse conditions, regular season contests in the pre-television era were occasionally postponed if the gate receipts might suffer. After 1950, games that were rescheduled due to weather were a result of a public emergency or damage to the stadium or area.

Labor issues

In 1982 and 1987, NFL players went on strike after the second week of the season, causing some games to be canceled and others to be rescheduled.

Old-time football reasons

In 1931, the NFL began centralizing the scheduling operations, which were previously left up to the individual teams. In the league’s first 13 seasons, games would routinely be added to the end of the schedule in order to pull out additional gate receipts which were the lifeblood of the era before television contracts. These games could be added on short notice, and impacted the standings and, more importantly, the league champion.

In 1952, 1934, and many times in the 1920s, NFL teams folded mid-season, causing its games to be rescheduled or canceled.

Lack of interest

Before the NFL was a juggernaut, teams would consider shifting games if ticket sales were low or if another event in the area might draw more attention. This sometimes led to moving a game to another city

Tragedy

Sometimes events are just bigger than the NFL. Commissioner Pete Rozelle often said his greatest mistake was to play games on the Sunday following the John F. Kennedy assassination (the rival American Football League did cancel games that weekend and shuffled the schedule for the next month). His successor, Paul Tagliabue, took note and canceled games the week following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

NFL rescheduled games, 1932-present ⁷Why 1932 and not 1920, the date of the NFL’s founding? The NFL schedule was not very stable prior to that date; adding pre-1932 games would double the size of the table without adding much interesting, though you would learn about the Mitchell Day holiday.

This list includes any game that shifted from its originally scheduled day and/or location.⁸Original schedules cited here are those from the Colts’ and Broncos’ media guides, supplemented by those from the NFL. Pre-1950 schedules are the earliest-available leaguewide schedules published in newspapers. This list includes any shifts outside of the standard established game windows, but not slight adjustments.⁹Examples of slight adjustments include early-afternoon kickoffs at times other than 1 p.m. Eastern due to local blue laws, the one-hour shift of the 1989 championship games due to two western home teams, or the shift of the NFL Championship games in 1960 and 1963 to noon due to the home stadiums’ lack of lights. There also have been delayed kickoffs for lightning storms, power outages, and, in 2014, a minor accident involving the Washington team bus.

The list does not include time flexing between the early and late day slots on Sunday, typically for maximizing network schedules.¹⁰Time flexes have happened for other reasons: a 2009 Jets-Buccaneers game scheduled for the late afternoon slot was moved to the early afternoon due to Yom Kippur beginning at sundown, and a 2020 scheduled Sunday Night Football between the Bucs and Raiders was flexed to the afternoon on short notice to insulate the cornerstone time slot from a potential coronavirus shutdown. It also does not include Sunday Night Football flexed games or Saturday-to-Sunday or Sunday-to-Monday flexes already built into the schedule.

The list is limited to regular-season and post-season games. Canceled or rescheduled exhibition games such as the 2016 Hall of Fame Game, the 1965 AFL All-Star Game, and the 2021 Pro Bowl are not included.

Anomalies from the typical scheduling slots that were part of the original schedule are not included.¹¹Examples include the Wednesday Kickoff Game in 2008 (not planned for Thursday to avoid conflict with Barack Obama’s Democratic acceptance speech) and the non-home opener for the defending-champion Ravens in 2013 (due to a conflict with a pre-scheduled Orioles home game across the street). Before widespread television coverage, games were sometimes scheduled on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays; those games are not included. Home games for teams that were intentionally temporarily relocated (2002 Bears, 1997-98 Oilers, 1972-75 Giants) as part of the original schedule are not listed, but the 2005 Saints and the 1982 “Oakland” Raiders are.

The list includes home-and-home series that swapped the host team dates; in those cases, only the game that created the swap is listed.

Relocated games: (N) neutral site, (A) played in the opponent’s stadium or territory, (H) neutral-site game reverted to a home game; all other relocations in the same city/region have no letter (note that travel times in 1930s vs. modern era are a consideration for what is local). The number of days a game was moved is indicated (+ for postponements, – for games moved up to an earlier date). -AFL game.

Footnotes

• 1
  The current scheduling formulas and rotations date back to 2002, with a minor revision in 2021 to add a 17th game. Pre-1970 schedules were more ad hoc.
• 2
  The 2020 schedule was released on May 7 after being delayed several weeks by the pandemic. Typically, the schedule is released in mid-April.
• 3
  More accurately, 1.79% as of the date this article was originally posted, boosted heavily by the 1982 players strike.
• 4
  Note that Chuck Mangione is billed before Ray Charles.
• 5
  There are no current football/baseball co-tenants now that the Raiders have moved to Las Vegas.
• 6
  The Houston Astros were an exception, so the sites in the 1986 National League Championship Series were swapped to accommodate an Oilers home game.
• 7
  Why 1932 and not 1920, the date of the NFL’s founding? The NFL schedule was not very stable prior to that date; adding pre-1932 games would double the size of the table without adding much interesting, though you would learn about the Mitchell Day holiday.
• 8
  Original schedules cited here are those from the Colts’ and Broncos’ media guides, supplemented by those from the NFL. Pre-1950 schedules are the earliest-available leaguewide schedules published in newspapers.
• 9
  Examples of slight adjustments include early-afternoon kickoffs at times other than 1 p.m. Eastern due to local blue laws, the one-hour shift of the 1989 championship games due to two western home teams, or the shift of the NFL Championship games in 1960 and 1963 to noon due to the home stadiums’ lack of lights. There also have been delayed kickoffs for lightning storms, power outages, and, in 2014, a minor accident involving the Washington team bus.
• 10
  Time flexes have happened for other reasons: a 2009 Jets-Buccaneers game scheduled for the late afternoon slot was moved to the early afternoon due to Yom Kippur beginning at sundown, and a 2020 scheduled Sunday Night Football between the Bucs and Raiders was flexed to the afternoon on short notice to insulate the cornerstone time slot from a potential coronavirus shutdown.
• 11
  Examples include the Wednesday Kickoff Game in 2008 (not planned for Thursday to avoid conflict with Barack Obama’s Democratic acceptance speech) and the non-home opener for the defending-champion Ravens in 2013 (due to a conflict with a pre-scheduled Orioles home game across the street).