The 1999 NFL season was the 80th regular season of the National Football League. The Cleveland Browns returned to the field for the first time since the 1995 season. Also, the Tennessee Oilers changed its name to Tennessee Titans, and the league retired the name "Oilers" – a first in league history.
The return of the Browns increased the number of teams to 31, the
first time the league had played with an odd number of clubs since 1966.
As a result, the NFL was forced to give at least one team a bye
each week; Previously, barring extreme circumstances, a club never
received a bye during the first two weeks or last seven weeks of the
season. Under a new system, for ten weeks of the season (Week #1 to Week
#2, and Week #10 to Week #17), one team was scheduled a bye; for seven
weeks of the season (Week #3 to Week #9), three teams sat out. This
format would continue for the next two seasons until the Houston Texans joined the NFL in 2002 and returned the league to an even number of teams.
The start of the 1999 NFL Season was pushed back one week and started the weekend after Labor Day, a change from the previous seasons. Due to the Y2K
concerns, the NFL did not want to hold the opening round of the
playoffs on Saturday January 1, 2000, and did not want teams traveling
on that day. Week 17 games were held on January 2, 2000, and the opening
round of the playoff would be scheduled for January 8–9. The bye week
before the Super Bowl
was removed to accommodate the one-week adjustment. The start of the
season after Labor Day would become a regular fixture for future
seasons, beginning in 2001.
The final spot in the NFC playoffs came down to an exciting final day of the season. With both the Green Bay Packers and Carolina Panthers at 7–8 and tied for the last spot in the playoffs with the Dallas Cowboys,
and tied in other tiebreakers, the tie between them would be determined
by best net point differential in conference games. Both the Packers
and Panthers were playing at 1:00 PM Eastern on January 2, and both
teams tried to outscore the other. The Packers beat the Arizona Cardinals 49–24, and the Panthers beat the New Orleans Saints
45–13. The Packers finished ahead of the Panthers by 11 points, but
Dallas defeated the New York Giants later that night to claim the final
playoff spot.
The St. Louis Rams, who had a losing record for each of the past nine seasons, surprised the entire league by defeating the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV. Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_NFL_season
Final Stats:
No comments:
Post a Comment