The 1987 NFL season was the 68th regular season of the National Football League. A 24-day players' players' strike was called after week two. The games that were scheduled for the third week of the season were canceled, reducing the 16-game season to 15, but the games for weeks 4–6 were played with replacement players, after which the union voted to end the strike. Eighty-five percent of the veteran players did not cross picket lines during the strike.
The replacement player teams were given mock names like "Chicago Spare Bears", "San Francisco Phoney Niners", "New Orleans Saint Elsewheres", "Washington ScabSkins", and "Seattle Sea-scabs". Final television revenues were down by about 20%, a smaller drop than the networks had expected. The defending Super Bowl Champion New York Giants went 0–3 in replacement games, ultimately costing them a chance to make the playoffs and repeat their championship.
Starting on November 8, 1987, ESPN debuted ESPN Sunday Night Football, in which the cable network started to broadcast NFL Sunday night games primarily during the second half of the season.
Due to Game 7 of the 1987 World Series, the Denver Broncos – Minnesota Vikings game at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome was moved back one day to Monday, October 26.
Chicago Bears star halfback Walter Payton, who had set the NFL career rushing record in 1984, announced the 1987 season would be his last in the NFL. As was the case in the previous season, his Bears finished first in their division but lost in their first playoff game at home. Coincidentally, 1987 was the last year of use for the AstroTurf playing surface that was installed at Soldier Field in 1971; the Bears reinstalled a grass surface the next season.
After the season the St. Louis Cardinals' owners announced they would be leaving Missouri for Tempe, Arizona and become the Phoenix Cardinals for 1988.
The season ended with Super Bowl XXII when the Washington Redskins defeated the Denver Broncos 42-10 in Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. The Broncos made their second consecutive Super Bowl appearance while the Redskins were returning for the first time since they advanced to Super Bowl XVIII four seasons earlier.
Read more about 1987 NFL Season: Major Rule Changes, Final Standings, Awards
Famous quotes containing the word season:
“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)