Since 2002, The National Football League (NFL) season features the following schedule:
- a 4-game exhibition season (or preseason) running from early August to early September;
- a 16-game, 17-week regular season running from September to December or early January; and
- a 12-team playoff tournament beginning in January, culminating in the Super Bowl in early February.

Traditionally, American High school football games are played on Friday, American College football games are played on Saturday, and most NFL games are played on Sunday. Because the NFL season is longer than the college football season, the NFL schedules Saturday games and Saturday playoff games outside the college football Saturdays. The ABC Television network added Monday Night Football in 1970. Thursday night NFL games were added in the 1980s.
Exhibition season

Following mini-camps in the spring and officially recognized Training Camp in July-August, NFL teams typically play four exhibition games (referred to by the NFL as "pre-season games;" the league discourages the use of the term "exhibition game") from early August through early September. Each team hosts two games of the four. The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game and American Bowl are held at neutral sites, so the four teams in those games play five exhibition games each.
The games are useful for new players who are not used to playing in front of very large crowds. Management often uses the games to evaluate newly-signed players. Veteran starters will generally play only for about a quarter of each game to minimize the risk of injury.

Regular Season

Following the preseason, each of the 32 teams embark on a 17 week, 16 game schedule, with the extra week consisting of a bye to allow teams a rest sometime in the middle of the season. Each of the 32 teams' schedules are organized in the following way:
 - Each team plays the other three teams in its division twice: once at home, and once on the road (six games).
- Each team plays the four teams from another division within its own conference once on a rotating three-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
- Each team plays the four teams from a division in the other conference once on a rotating four-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).

- Each team plays once against the other teams in its conference that finished in the same place in their own divisions as themselves, not counting the division they were already scheduled to play: one at home, one on the road (two games).
Playoffs

The season concludes with a 12-team tournament used to determine the teams to play in the Super Bowl. The tournament brackets are made up of six teams from each of the league's two conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC), following the end of the 16-game regular season:
- The four division champions from each conference (the team in each division with the best regular season won-lost-tied record), which are seeded 1 through 4 based on their regular season won-lost-tied record.
- Two wild card qualifiers from each conference (those non-division champions with the conference's best record, i.e. the best won-lost-tied percentages, with a series of tie-breaking rules in place in the event that there are teams with the same number of wins and losses), which are seeded 5 and 6.

The 3 and the 6 seeded teams, and the 4 and the 5 seeds, face each other during the first round of the playoffs, dubbed the Wild Card Playoffs (the league in recent years has also used the term Wild Card Weekend). The 1 and the 2 seeds from each conference receive a bye in the first round, which entitles these teams to automatically advance to the second round, the Divisional Playoff games, to face the winning teams from the first round. In any given playoff round, the highest surviving seed always plays the lowest surviving seed. And in any given playoff game, whoever has the higher seed gets the home field advantage (i.e. the game is held at the higher seed's home field).
The two surviving teams from the Divisional Playoff games meet in Conference Championship games, with the winners of those contests going on to face one another in the Super Bowl in a game located at a neutral venue that is either indoors or in a warm-weather locale. The designated "home team" alternates year to year between the conferences. In Super Bowl 42 the AFC team (New England Patriots) were "home". In Super Bowl 43 the NFC team will be the home team.