1999 NFL season

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 gave the league 31 teams (the first time since about 1966 that the NFL had an odd number of teams). As a result, the NFL was forced to give at least one team a bye each week. Previously, the league never gave a club the week off during the first two weeks or last seven weeks of the season (the only exception being in 1992, when the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots had a bye in week 1 as Hurricane Andrew forced the postponement of their season-opening game to October 18, when their byes were originally scheduled). Under this new system, for ten weeks of the season (Week #1 to Week #2, and Week #10 to Week #17), exactly 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...
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