2010 NFL season

Schedule

The 2010 regular season was the first year that the league used a modified version of the scheduling formula that was first introduced in 2002, in which all teams play each other at least once every four years, and play in every other team's stadium at least once every eight years (notwithstanding the regular season games played overseas as part of the NFL International Series). Under the original 2002 formula, since the pairings were strictly based on alphabetical order, those teams scheduled to play the entire AFC West had to travel to both Oakland and San Diego in the same season, while those teams playing the entire NFC West had to make their way to both San Francisco and Seattle. In 2008, the New England Patriots and New York Jets each had to make cross-country trips to all four of the aforementioned West Coast teams. In an effort to relieve east coast teams from having to travel to the West Coast multiple times during the same season, teams will only have to visit one West Coast team (AFC West or NFC West), plus one western team from the same division closer to the Midwest, under the 2010 modified formula. Specifically, those teams traveling to Oakland will now also play at Denver, while those playing at San Diego will also play at Kansas City. For teams scheduled to play the NFC West, those traveling to San Francisco will also go to Arizona, while those scheduled to play in Seattle would initially also travel to St. Louis.

For the 2010 season, the intraconference and interconference matchups are:

The entire 2010 regular-season schedule was unveiled at 7:00 pm EDT on Tuesday, April 20. Additionally, schedule release shows aired on both the NFL Network and as a SportsCenter special on ESPN2.

Draft

The league's 75th annual selection meeting, more commonly known as the NFL Draft, took place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City from April 22–24, the first time that the draft was held over three days instead of the normal two.

Preseason

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game was held on Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 8:00 pm EDT on NBC, with the Dallas Cowboys defeating the Cincinnati Bengals, 16–7 at Fawcett Stadium in Canton, Ohio. The remainder of the preseason game matchups were announced March 31, 2010. Highlights, among others, include the New York Giants and New York Jets facing off in the first-ever game at New Meadowlands Stadium on ESPN. The preseason game in the Bills Toronto Series featured the host Bills defeating the Indianapolis Colts in Toronto on Thursday, August 19 by a score of 34–21. Exact dates and times for most games were announced in April, shortly after the regular season games were announced.

Opening weekend

The NFL Kickoff Game, the first game of the season, took place on Thursday, September 9, 2010, starting at 8:35 pm EDT, with the Super Bowl XLIV champion New Orleans Saints hosting the Minnesota Vikings, in a rematch of the 2009 NFC Championship Game. The Saints won 14–9. Like in previous years, the opening week's prime-time games were expected to be announced at the NFL's annual owners meetings in late March, but that wasn't the case this year, with the schedule announced on April 20.

On March 15, 2010, the NFL announced that both the New York Giants and New York Jets will play at home during the opening weekend to open New Meadowlands Stadium. The Giants played on Sunday with a 1 pm EDT kickoff against the Carolina Panthers and the Jets opened ESPN's Monday Night Football schedule against the Baltimore Ravens the next night. For the nightcap, the San Diego Chargers traveled to play their division rival, the Kansas City Chiefs, marking the first time that a team from outside the Mountain or Pacific Time Zones has played in, or hosted, the "late" (10:15 pm ET) game. The game started at 9:15 pm Kansas City time (Central).

No undefeated teams after Week Five

While the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints had both started the year before 13–0 (with the Colts even going 14–0), on October 10, the Kansas City Chiefs became the last team to lose, losing to the Colts 19–9. It would mark the first time that no NFL team reached 4–0 since 1970, when the Detroit Lions, Denver Broncos, and St. Louis Rams started the season 3–0 but all lost in Week 4.

International play

The 2010 season featured one International Series game, played at Wembley Stadium in London. The teams for this game were confirmed on January 15, 2010, with the San Francisco 49ers playing host to the Denver Broncos on October 31, 2010, at 1:00 pm EDT (5:00 pm GMT). The 49ers won 24–16, scoring 21 points in the 4th quarter. CBS televised this game on a regional basis, as the Broncos were the "visiting" team. The Kansas City Chiefs and Seattle Seahawks, who had expressed interest in previous games, were a possible matchup for a second NFL game (with the Seahawks as the home team), but league officials dropped a plan for two games in the UK, citing the economy and ongoing labor negotiations.

The following week, the third regular-season game of the Bills Toronto Series featured the Buffalo Bills hosting the Chicago Bears at Toronto's Rogers Centre on November 7 at 1 pm EST, marking the first time that the regular-season portion of the series has taken place during the Canadian Football League season and the first time an NFC opponent played in the series.

NFL vs. World Series Game 4

On the same day that the Broncos and 49ers played in London, the Saints hosted the Pittsburgh Steelers on NBC's Sunday Night Football. This game was televised opposite Game Four of the World Series on Fox, a practice the league had traditionally avoided. The Saints won this game 20–10.

Thanksgiving and Christmas

The Thanksgiving games took place on Thursday, November 25, 2010, with the Detroit Lions falling to the visiting New England Patriots, 45–24. The second game featured the Dallas Cowboys giving up a late lead to the New Orleans Saints. New Orleans won 30–27 when Saints quarterback Drew Brees threw a go-ahead touchdown to Lance Moore with less than two minutes remaining. In the prime-time NFL Network game, the New York Jets defeated the visiting Cincinnati Bengals, 26–10.

Both the Saints and Bengals made their first appearance in a Thanksgiving game; in the case of the Bengals, it also marked the first appearance of an AFC North team on Thanksgiving since 1998, when the Pittsburgh Steelers of what was known as the AFC Central played the Detroit Lions.

Additionally, since Christmas Day fell on a Saturday in 2010, the NFL scheduled a Christmas game between the Cowboys and the Arizona Cardinals in Glendale, Arizona on December 25 on NFL Network. The Cowboys came back from a 21–3 deficit behind third-string quarterback Stephen McGee to take a 26–24 lead late in the fourth quarter, but kicker David Buehler missed an extra point, allowing the Cardinals to win the game 27–26 on a last-second Jay Feely field goal.

Week 17: Division games only

The entire Week 17 schedule, played on January 2, 2011, consisted solely of divisional contests, in an attempt to increase competition after several cases over the last few seasons of playoff-bound teams resting their regular starters and playing their reserves. This trend would continue ever since.

Scheduling changes

Regular season standings

Playoff seeds are marked in parentheses and shaded in green

Postseason

The 2010–11 NFL playoff tournament began January 8–9, 2011 with wild card weekend. Following that, the divisional playoffs set the matchups for the NFC Championship Game, to be played at 3:00 pm EST on January 23, and the AFC Championship Game, to be played at 6:30 pm EST.

After a backlash from players and critics about the previous season's Pro Bowl being played at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida in the contiguous United States, the 2011 Pro Bowl was played at Aloha Stadium in Halawa, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. The date was January 30, 2011, the week before the Super Bowl. An NFL spokesman stated that "Plans for future Pro Bowls are not final." Indianapolis Colts President Bill Polian has stated his objections to the format, and is in favor of returning the game to after the Super Bowl as in previous years.

The annual Pro Bowl had previously been played in Hawaii for 30 consecutive seasons from 1980 to 2009. However, the NFL and State of Hawaiʻi officials only agreed to a two-year deal to hold the Pro Bowl at Aloha Stadium in 2011 and 2012. This gives the option of playing the Pro Bowl in Hawaiʻi on a rotational basis with the mainland, so it both maintains the traditional ties of holding it on the islands and providing accessibility to fans when played in the contiguous 48 states.

Super Bowl XLV, was held at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on February 6, 2011, and was the NFL's final event of the 2010 season.

Within each conference, the four division winners and the two wild card teams (the top two non-division winners with the best overall regular season records) qualified for the playoffs. The four division winners are seeded 1 through 4 based on their overall won-lost-tied record, and the wild card teams are seeded 5 and 6. The NFL does not use a fixed bracket playoff system, and there are no restrictions regarding teams from the same division matching up in any round. In the first round, dubbed the wild-card playoffs or wild-card weekend, the third-seeded division winner hosts the sixth seed wild card, and the fourth seed hosts the fifth. The 1 and 2 seeds from each conference then receive a bye in the first round. In the second round, the divisional playoffs, the number 1 seed hosts the worst surviving seed from the first round (seed 4, 5 or 6), while the number 2 seed will play the other team (seed 3, 4 or 5). The two surviving teams from each conference's divisional playoff games then meet in the respective AFC and NFC Conference Championship games, hosted by the higher seed. Although the Super Bowl, the fourth and final round of the playoffs, is played at a neutral site, the designated home team is based on an annual rotation by conference.

Labor issues

NFL owners voted in 2008 to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) as of the end of the 2010 season. (The vote was 23 in favor, 9 against; the extension measure needed 24 to pass, which would have set the CBA to expire after the 2012 season). Since a new CBA was not reached with the NFLPA, 2010 was an uncapped season, meaning that there was no salary cap or salary floor between which teams had to operate. Also, the uncapped season limited unrestricted free agency only to players with at least six years of experience, as opposed to four under a capped season. The final eight teams alive in the 2009–10 NFL playoffs (Arizona, Dallas, Minnesota and New Orleans in the NFC; and Baltimore, Indianapolis, the New York Jets and San Diego in the AFC) were restricted in the free agents they would be able to sign.

The issue of a CBA continued into the 2011 NFL season, affecting most of the off-season.

Rule changes

The following rule changes were passed at the league's annual owners meeting in March:

Crowd noise

The NFL relaxed all rules regarding crowd noise, citing the need to increase the in-stadium experience to lure more fans to attend games. In addition, the league cited the advances in the coach-to-quarterback radio communications, and more visiting teams using silent snap counts as an alternative to overcome crowd noise.

The NFL's rules to "legislate the fans", and help visiting offensive players hear the snap count, have been controversial from the start. In one notorious example, then-Cincinnati Bengals head coach Sam Wyche and then-quarterback Boomer Esiason "protested" the crowd noise rules during a 1989 nationally televised preseason game against the New Orleans Saints by constantly complaining to the referee about the loud crowd noise inside the Superdome.

The league will still allow stadiums to post visual noise meters and other scoreboard messages to incite fans to make noise, but they must cease when the play clock is down to 15 seconds. However, home teams are still prohibited from pumping in artificial noise.

Crackdown on illegal hits

After several violent hits throughout the NFL made the news in Week 3, the league announced that it would consider suspending players for illegal hits, such as helmet-to-helmet hits or other blows to the head. (Previously, players could only be fined for such hits.) The league also instructed all officials and referees to have an even higher level of attention toward flagrant hits. Game officials were also instructed to err on the side of safety, and throw flags even when in doubt.

The crackdown has been controversial. Many defensive players have complained that the league is being too strict in their interpretation of what constitutes an "illegal hit", and that it forces them to behave significantly different than how they were taught to play the game. Another concern is the league's instructions to game officials to err on the side of caution, since questionable calls late in close games significantly affect their outcome. However, the medical community has supported the move, believing that it would help reduce concussions and other head injuries.

The league did not end up suspending any players for violent or illegal hits, however several players were fined for these types of hits within the first few weeks of the crackdown.

Super Bowl and conference logo, trophy changes

Starting with Super Bowl XLV, the template of all Super Bowl logos will virtually remain the same. The only differences from year to year will be the stadium backdrop and the Roman numerals for the game as well as colors of the area. For Super Bowl XLV, Cowboys Stadium is featured and "XLV" signifying the forty-fifth Super Bowl game.

The NFL also introduced new Lamar Hunt and George Halas trophies for the AFC and NFC Championship games. The trophies were changed from a brown base with an 'A' or 'N' on top of it surrounded by players layered on a frieze upon a wall, to silver trophies in the make of a football. Additionally, both the NFC and AFC logos were revamped and recolored to reflect the current shield adopted two years earlier and with four stars running down the inside on both logos top to bottom from left to right instead of the six surrounding the AFC and three down the side of the NFC logo as each conference has four divisions. In addition, all event and playoff logos have undergone a complete makeover in a new logo system.

Uniforms

In the 2010 season, the Washington Redskins were the only team who made a major change to their main uniforms, wearing gold pants with their burgundy jerseys, and except for a game against the Packers, wore them for home games instead of their white jerseys and red pants. The white pants were not abandoned entirely, and would be worn together with the burgundy jerseys for the two away games (and one home game) in which their opponent wore white at home. This was made possible with a sleeve modification, in which the broad yellow and white stripes were severely shrunken on an elastic band (same for white jerseys) so that when wearing the gold pants, the team also wore the retro style socks that had a different stripe pattern matching the sleeves of the day, so there is no longer a stripe design conflict.

The Green Bay Packers became the first team to officially unveil a third uniform for 2010, a throwback uniform based on their 1929 uniforms when they won their first NFL championship. The throwbacks are as accurate as possible while complying with current NFL guidelines, with a brown modern-shell helmet in place of the leather helmets of 1929, along with blue jerseys and gold circles with the jersey numbers nested within the circles, and brown pants. Like throwbacks worn in recent seasons by the San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys, Buffalo Bills, New York Jets, and the archrival Minnesota Vikings, these throwbacks will be a permanent addition to the Packers uniforms, unlike throwbacks worn by the Detroit Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers that were intended as one-time deals but made permanent, as well as several one-shot throwbacks in recent years. The new Packers throwbacks replace the previous throwbacks (which comprised the current helmets with the "G" logo and stripes removed, white jerseys with plain green lettering, and tan pants) worn sporadically since the early 2000s (decade).

Also going the throwback route were the Chicago Bears, who harkened back to the Sid Luckman era with a 1940s set, replacing the pumpkin orange third jerseys, and the Indianapolis Colts, who will wear 1955 throwbacks as well. Since the Colts only have two colors, they only have previously worn a throwback jersey once in their history, in 2004. The difference between the 2004 throwback and the 2010 throwback is the helmet color, which reverses the 2004 scheme.

The Arizona Cardinals, who were the only team to not wear a third jersey in any form since the NFL allowed third jerseys in 2002, unveiled a black third jersey to be worn in 2010.

The Philadelphia Eagles have adopted their 1960 championship uniforms that were worn September 12 against the Packers, the team they beat to win their last championship in celebration of the 50th anniversary of that game.

The Tennessee Titans returned to using navy blue jerseys as their third jersey, after a one-year hiatus in which they wore light blue Houston Oilers throwback jerseys in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the American Football League, but did not wear them for any game in 2010.

The Pittsburgh Steelers wore their throwbacks against the Cleveland Browns on October 17 and against the New England Patriots on November 14.

The Seattle Seahawks have retired the neon green uniform worn for one game in 2009 against Chicago, which was in turn an offshoot from an April Fools Day joke written about by Uni Watch founder Paul Lukas that year.

Media

This is the fifth season under the current television contracts with the league's television partners: CBS (all AFC Sunday afternoon away games and one Thanksgiving game), Fox (all NFC Sunday afternoon away games and one Thanksgiving game), NBC (17 Sunday night games and the kickoff game), ESPN (17 Monday night games over sixteen weeks), NFL Network (eight late-season games on Thursday and Saturday nights, including one Thanksgiving game), and DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket package. These contracts run through at least 2013.

In national radio, this is the second year on Westwood One's most recent contract extension. The network also agreed to a four-year extension on December 23, 2010.

Nielsen Ratings for the fall 2010 television season have shown viewership increases of up to 10 percent for most of the NFL's broadcast partners; eighteen of the twenty most watched television broadcasts of the season have so far been NFL games.

Stadiums

New Meadowlands Stadium opened in 2010, replacing Giants Stadium as the home of both the New York Giants and the New York Jets. The new stadium is located a few hundred feet away from the old building in the parking lot of Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Unlike Giants Stadium (in which the Giants were the sole NFL tenant until the 1984 season), the new Meadowlands Stadium will be a 50/50 partnership between both New York teams. The Giants played their first regular season game on September 12 against the Carolina Panthers, while the Jets played the following night against the Baltimore Ravens in the first game of a Monday Night Football doubleheader.

Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs since 1972, underwent a two-year $375 million renovation project which was completed and unveiled in July 2010. The stadium hosted the second game of the Monday Night Football opening weekend doubleheader when the Chiefs played the San Diego Chargers.

M&T Bank Stadium, home of the Baltimore Ravens, installed FieldTurf prior to the 2010 season. The field had been Sportexe Momentum Turf since 2002 and grass before that.

Prior to Week 14, the inflatable roof of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, home of the Minnesota Vikings, buckled and tore as a result of heavy snowfall in Minneapolis, spilling snow onto Mall of America field and rendering the stadium unusable for the remainder of the Vikings' season. The Vikings' scheduled home game against the New York Giants was moved to Detroit's Ford Field and postponed to a 7:20 pm EST kickoff on Monday. Though stadium workers were initially "optimistic" that the roof could be repaired before the Vikings faced the Chicago Bears on December 20, stadium officials determined that such a repair would not be possible in that time frame and the game was moved to TCF Bank Stadium.

Two stadiums received new naming rights: On January 20, LandShark Stadium, the home field of the Miami Dolphins, was renamed Sun Life Stadium. The Dolphins' home field, originally named Joe Robbie Stadium from 1987–1996, has undergone several name changes in its history, including Pro Player Stadium (1996–2005), Dolphin Stadium (2006–2009), and most recently, LandShark Stadium. On July 27, Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, the home field of the Jacksonville Jaguars, was renamed EverBank Field.

Records

Passing

Starts

Turnovers

Special Teams

Sacks

Playoff records

All-Time Records set or tied

Milestones and Firsts

Players of the Week

The following were the players of the week during the 2010 season:

Offense

Defense