2008 National Football League Season
The 2008 NFL season was the 89th regular season of the National Football League, themed with the slogan “Believe in Now.”
Super Bowl XLIII, the league’s championship game, was at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida on February 1, 2009, with the Pittsburgh Steelers coming out victorious over the Arizona Cardinals 27–23 and winning their NFL-record sixth Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Conversely, the Detroit Lions became the first NFL team with a winless season since the strike-shortened 1982 NFL season, finishing their season 0-16. For the first time since the NFL expanded to the sixteen game season in 1978, three teams won two or fewer games: the Lions, the Kansas City Chiefs and the St. Louis Rams. Previously two teams won two or fewer games in 1979, 1981, 1985, 1992 and 2001.
The regular season began on September 4 with the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants defeating the Washington Redskins 16–7, and concluded with the 2009 Pro Bowl on February 8, 2009 in Honolulu.
Read more about 2008 National Football League Season: Final Regular Season Standings, Playoffs, Rule Changes, Uniforms, Milestones, Regular Season Statistical Leaders
Famous quotes containing the words national, football, league and/or season:
“A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money—provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don’t need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)
“Methoughts a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries that with the very noise
I trembling waked, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made my dream.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)