NFL Announces 2016 Regular-Season Cowboys Games
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For the Dallas Cowboys and 19 other of the NFL's 32 teams, the 2015 season is officially over, which means it's the perfect time to start talking about the 2016 season!
On Monday, the league announced the 2016 home-and-away opponents for the Dallas Cowboys and all 32 teams.
For Cowboys fans, your mouth should be watering because Dallas will get to play six games in 2016 against teams that will have just hired a new coach (two games vs. the Giants, two games vs. the Eagles, one game vs. Cleveland and San Francisco).
The 2016 regular season will kick off on Thursday, Sept. 8, and end after Week 17 is played on Jan. 1, 2017.
For your Dallas Cowboys in 2016:
Home: Redskins, Giants, Eagles, Bears, Lions, Buccaneers, Ravens, Bengals
Away: Redskins, Giants, Eagles, Packers, Vikings, 49ers, Browns, Steelers
The 2016 NFL season will conclude on Feb. 5, 2017, at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, where the NFC champion and AFC champion will meet in Super Bowl LI.
Under the scheduling formula implemented in 2002, every team plays 16 games as follows:
- Home and away against its three division opponents (six games).
- The four teams from another division within its conference on a rotating three-year cycle (four games).
- The four teams from a division in the other conference on a rotating four-year cycle (four games).
- Two intraconference games based on the prior year's standings (two games). These games match a first-place team against the first-place teams in the two same-conference divisions that the team is not scheduled to play that season. The second-place, third-place, and fourth-place teams in a conference are matched in the same way each year.
- Beginning in 2010, a change was made to how teams are paired in the schedule rotation to ensure that teams playing the AFC and NFC West divisions would not be required to make two West Coast trips (e.g., at San Francisco and at Seattle), while other teams in their division had none (e.g., at St. Louis and at Arizona).
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