2001 NFL Season

The 2001 NFL season was the 82nd regular season of the National Football League.

Following a pattern set in 1999, the first week of the season was permanently moved to the weekend following Labor Day. With Super Bowls XXXVI-XXXVII already scheduled for fixed dates, the league initially decided to eliminate the Super Bowl bye weeks for those two years to adjust.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the games for September 16 – September 17 were postponed and re-scheduled to the weekend of January 6 – January 7. In order to retain the full playoff format, all playoff games, including the Super Bowl were re-scheduled one week later. The season-ending Pro Bowl was also moved to one week later. This was the last season in which each conference had 3 divisions, as the conferences were realigned to 4 divisions for the 2002 NFL Season.

Canceling the games scheduled for Sept. 16–17 was considered and rejected. That would have canceled a home game for half the teams of the league, and also would have resulted in an unequal number of games played (Sept. 16–17 was to have been a bye for the San Diego Chargers, so that team would still have played 16 games that season and each of the other teams would have played only 15 games; the Chargers ultimately finished 5-11, making any competitive advantages to playing an extra game moot).

As a result of rescheduling Week 2 as Week 17, the ESPN Sunday Night Football game for that week was changed. It was originally scheduled to be Cleveland at Pittsburgh, but it was replaced with Philadelphia at Tampa Bay, which was seen as a more interesting matchup (it was the only night game the Browns had on the schedule, whereas the Steelers had a few others; so 2000 and 2001 marked the first back-to-back seasons for the Browns without a primetime game since 1974–76; the Browns would finally play in Heinz Field at night in 2003). Ironically, the Eagles and the Buccaneers would both rest their starters that night, and they would meet one week later in the playoffs. In recognition of this, when NBC began airing Sunday Night Football in 2006, there would be no game initially scheduled for weeks 11–17 – a game initially scheduled in the afternoon would be moved to the primetime slot, without stripping any teams of a primetime appearance. This way of "flexible scheduling" would not be utilized at all in 2007, and since 2008, it is only utilized in the final week.

The games that eventually made up Week 17 marked the latest regular season games to be played during what is traditionally defined as "NFL season" (under the current format, the regular season cannot end later than January 3 in any given year).

Also, this was the only NFL season where every jersey had a patch to remember those who died in 9/11, and the NY Jets and NY Giants wore a patch to remember the fire fighters who died.

The season ended with Super Bowl XXXVI when the New England Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams.