NFL Teams Quiz
Behind every NFL helmet is a local story, from factory floors to faded jerseys.
An NFL teams quiz with answers about names, logos and origins rather than scores and seasons. You do not need to follow every game: a feel for American cities and their history goes a long way.
Did you know?
- The first logo ever painted on a football helmet was the work of a player. In 1948 Fred Gehrke, a Los Angeles Rams halfback who had studied art, painted yellow ram's horns on his team's leather helmets by hand. The owner paid him one dollar for each helmet he finished.
- The Seattle Seahawks retired the number 12 in 1984, although no player was being honored. The number belongs to the crowd, known as the '12th Man', because eleven players are on the field at a time and the noise of the home fans is treated as an extra one.
- MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is home to both the New York Giants and the New York Jets. The building's lighting changes from blue to green depending on which of the two teams is playing, so that each can make the shared stadium feel like its own.
How NFL teams got their names and homes
Professional football began in the industrial towns of the American Midwest, where factories and local businesses sponsored teams to advertise themselves. Most of those small-town clubs disappeared as the sport moved to big cities with bigger stadiums. Green Bay, a Wisconsin city of only about 100,000 people, is the one survivor from that era and is by far the smallest market in the league.
Names with local roots
Many team names say something about their home. Pittsburgh's team was renamed the Steelers in 1940 after the city's main industry, having previously shared the name Pirates with the local baseball club. Minnesota's Vikings reflect the Scandinavian heritage of many families in the state. The Cleveland Browns are named after a person, their first coach, Paul Brown, and they remain the only team with no logo on the helmet at all. Houston's Texans, who began play in 2002, are the league's newest franchise.
Teams on the move
A team's name does not always match its address. The Colts left Baltimore for Indianapolis in 1984, their equipment loaded onto moving vans in the middle of the night. The Rams have played in Cleveland, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Los Angeles again, and the Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020. Both New York teams, the Giants and the Jets, actually play their home games across the state line in New Jersey, where they share a stadium.
Conferences and colors
The modern league took shape in 1970, when the NFL merged with its younger rival, the American Football League, and split into two conferences, the AFC and the NFC. Since 2002 each conference has had four divisions of four teams. Colors carry meaning too: Pittsburgh's black and gold come from the city's flag, and several franchises have kept the same shades for generations even while moving to a different city or redesigning their logos.