The 2011 NFL season was the 92nd regular season of the National Football League. It began on Thursday, September 8, 2011, with the Super Bowl XLV champion Green Bay Packers defeating the New Orleans Saints 42–34 at Lambeau Field and ended with Super Bowl XLVI, the league's championship game, on February 5, 2012, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis where the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots 21–17.

Due to a labor dispute between league owners and players, a lockout began on March 11 and ended on July 25, lasting 18 weeks and 4 days (130 days). Although it initially threatened to postpone or cancel the season, the only game that was canceled was the August 7 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game.

The 2011 season saw an unprecedented amount of passing offense: Four of the six highest passing yardage totals of all time were established 2011: No. 1 Drew Brees (5,476), No. 2 Tom Brady (5,235), No. 5 Matthew Stafford (5,038) and No. 6 Eli Manning (4,933).

Further cementing the modern NFL's reputation as a "passing league" was the fact that, for the second consecutive year, the league overall set a record for most average passing yards per team per game, with 229.7, breaking 2010's record by more than eight yards per game. (For comparison, the league-wide average rushing yards total finished the 2011 season at 57th all-time.)

The National Football League has enjoyed success in selling out many of their venues from season ticket sales alone. Out of 32 teams in the league, 24 claim to have waiting lists from under 1,000 people to over 150,000. For some fans, this means a wait not just of years, but decades. This is due mostly to the NFL's short window of play; there are only eight regular-season home games, forcing the most devoted fans into a desperate and sometimes costly search for a limited number of events.

Since 1973, the waiting lists have also had the by-product of preventing any home games of certain teams from being blacked out on local television. Home games must be sold out within 72 hours of kickoff before a telecast is allowed, and the longest waiting lists have ensured every home game of the applicable teams being locally televised. Prior to 1973, home games could not be locally televised even if they were sold out. Four teams have had the benefit of not seeing any blackouts at all since 1972.

Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs) is a license which grants the holder the right to buy season tickets for a particular team. PSLs were first used in the NFL by the expansion Carolina Panthers in 1993 to help finance their new stadium. Since that time, several teams have used the mechanism to finance new stadium projects including the Chicago Bears remodel of Soldier Field and more recently the Dallas Cowboys. The New York Jets and the New York Giants used PSL programs to finance the construction of the New Meadowlands Stadium, now MetLife Stadium.

Marvin Daniel Levy (born August 3, 1925) is a former American and Canadian football coach, front office executive and author.

He is a former professional football coach, in the CFL as head coach of the Montreal Alouettes (1973–1977), and in the NFL as head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs (1978–1982) and the Buffalo Bills (1986–1997), coaching the Bills to four consecutive American Football Conference Championships. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001.

Levy's family emigrated from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His father, a decorated World War I veteran, ran a small business on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, USA. He graduated from South Shore High School in Chicago, in 1943. Following graduation, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and spent the remainder of World War II in the military; Levy was discharged from the army shortly after the war ended. Though he was known to use historical examples to inspire his teams, Levy corrected those who used war and combat metaphors to describe football games by telling them that he actually fought in a war and that football and war were in no way comparable. Referring to the Super Bowl, he once said "This is not a must-win; World War II was a must-win".