NFL 2023 Schedule Fun Facts! The NFL’s 104th season is scheduled to begin on Thursday, Sept. 7 with the regular season running through Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024.
The defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs will host the NFL Kickoff game for the Thursday opener on Sept. 7 at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium incredibly against Craig Shemon’s Detroit Lions!
Since 2004, 18 defending Super Bowl champions have played in the first game to open the season, and those teams have gone 14-4 in those games.
However, the 2021 Super Bowl champion Rams lost their opener last season against the Bills, 31-10.
This season’s schedule will feature 14 playoff rematches from last season, the most in a season in NFL history. That includes a rematch of the Super Bowl (Chiefs-Eagles), both Conference Championships (Bengals-Chiefs & 49ers-Eagles) and all 4 Divisional Round games (Bengals-Bills, Jaguars-Chiefs, Cowboys-49ers & GiantsEagles).
This will be the third straight season that each team will play 17 games (over 18 weeks), after the NFL had played a 16-game regular season schedule from 1978-2020 (excluding the 1982 and 1987 strike-shortened seasons).
Here are the key dates for the 2023 season:
Thursday, August 3: Hall of Fame Game (Browns vs Jets)
Thursday, September 7: NFL season opener (Lions-Chiefs)
Sunday, January 7, 2024: Final day of regular season
Sunday, February 11, 2024: Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada
Allegiant Stadium opened in 2020 and this will mark the first time that Las Vegas and the state of Nevada will host a Super Bowl.
One of those playoffs rematches I spoke of earlier is a Super Bowl rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs, which will mark the 9th time in NFL history that Super Bowl participants meet in the season immediately following their Super Bowl matchup, and the first time since 2017 (Falcons at Patriots).
Below is a list of Reunion Games I think are very interesting: