1971 NFL season

The 1971 NFL season was the 52nd regular season of the National Football League. The season ended with Super Bowl VI when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Miami Dolphins. Before the season, the Boston Patriots changed their name to New England Patriots after they moved to their new home field, Schaefer Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Major rule changes

 * Teams will not be charged a time out for an injured player unless the injury occurs inside the last two minutes of a half.

Division races
Starting in 1970, and until 2002, there were three divisions (Eastern, Central and Western) in each conference. The winners of each division, and a fourth "wild card" team based on the best non-division winner, qualified for the playoffs. The tiebreaker rules were changed to start with head-to-head competition, followed by division records, common opponents records, and conference play. (More tiebreakers were provided in 1971 because, in 1970, changing just one game's outcome would have led to a coin toss between Dallas and Detroit for the NFC wild-card berth.)

National Football Conference

American Football Conference

Final standings
W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, PCT= Winning Percentage, PF= Points For, PA = Points Against

 – clinched wild card berth, – clinched division title

Note: Prior to 1972, the NFL did not include tie games when calculating a team's winning percentage in the official standings

Tiebreakers

 * New England finished ahead of N.Y. Jets in the AFC East based on better point differential in head to head games, 13 points.

Playoffs

 * Note: Prior to the 1975 season, the home teams in the playoffs were decided based on a yearly rotation.