The

1997 Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 1 ...

Tennessee Oilers season was their 38th season overall and 28th in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

(NFL). It was the team's only season in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Situated along the Mississippi River, it had a population of 633,104 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Tenne ...

after moving from

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, and they played at the

Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, originally named Memphis Memorial Stadium, and later Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, is a stadium, football stadium located at the former Mid-South Fairgrounds in the Midtown, Memphis, Midtown area of Memphis, Tenne ...

. Led by head coach Jeff Fisher, the Oilers finished the season with 8 wins and 8 losses, and did not qualify for the playoffs. Despite defeating the

Oakland Raiders The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team based in Oakland, California, from its founding in 1960 to 1981, and again from 1995 to 2019 before Oakland Raiders relocation to Las Vegas, relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan ...

24–21 in their first game in their new city, they lost the next four games and would not recover.

Offseason

NFL draft

Personnel

Staff

Roster

Preseason

Regular season

The Oilers' new stadium would not be ready until 1999, however, and the largest stadium in Nashville at the time, Vanderbilt Stadium on the campus of

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private university, private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provide ...

, seated only 41,000. At first,

Bud Adams Kenneth Stanley "Bud" Adams Jr. (January 3, 1923 – October 21, 2013) was an American businessman who was the founder and owner of the Houston Oilers of the American Football League (AFL), of which he was also a co-founder. The franchise eve ...

rejected Vanderbilt Stadium even as a temporary facility and announced that the renamed Tennessee Oilers would play the next two seasons at

in Memphis. The team would be based in Nashville, commuting to Memphis only for games—in effect, consigning the Oilers to 32 road games for the next two years. Even though this arrangement was acceptable to the NFL and the Oilers at the time, few people in either Memphis or Nashville were pleased by it. Memphis had made numerous attempts to get an NFL team (including the

Memphis Hound Dogs The Memphis Hound Dogs were a proposed NFL team in the early-1990s. Former Memphis Showboats owner William Dunavant, Paul Tudor Jones, Fred Smith and Elvis Presley Enterprises were the members of the potential ownership group. In 1993, th ...

and the Memphis Grizzlies court case), and many people in the area wanted nothing to do with a team that would be lost in only two years—especially to longtime rival Nashville. Conversely, Nashvillians showed little inclination to drive over 200 miles (300 km) to see "their" team. As a result, attendance at the Liberty Bowl was disastrous: on at least two occasions, fewer than 18,000 fans came to the stadium to see the Oilers, a number smaller than the attendance figures the team was getting in Houston after they had announced the move, and smaller than the fan bases the USFL's

Memphis Showboats The Memphis Showboats were an American football franchise in the United States Football League. They entered the league in its expansion in 1984 and made the 1985 playoffs, losing in the semifinal round to the Oakland Invaders. Perhaps the ...

and XFL's

Memphis Maniax The Memphis Maniax were an American football team based in Memphis, Tennessee. The team was part of the XFL (2001), XFL begun by Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment and by NBC, a major television network in the United States. Home gam ...

had drawn/would draw to the same stadium. If not for the attendance of fans supporting the Oilers' opponents, attendance would likely have even been smaller than it was for the CFL's

Memphis Mad Dogs The Memphis Mad Dogs were a Canadian football team that played the 1995 CFL season, 1995 season in the Canadian Football League. The Mad Dogs were part of a failed attempt to CFL USA, expand the CFL into the United States. They played at Liberty ...

. Even in weeks when the Oilers drew over 30,000 fans (which only happened twice), many of the attendees were fans of the opposing team, padding the attendance totals.

Schedule

Game summaries

Week 1: vs. Oakland Raiders

Week 2: at Miami Dolphins

Week 4: vs. Baltimore Ravens

Week 5: at Pittsburgh Steelers

Week 6: at Seattle Seahawks

Week 7: vs. Cincinnati Bengals

Week 8: vs. Washington Redskins

Week 9: at Arizona Cardinals

Week 10: vs. Jacksonville Jaguars

Week 11: vs. New York Giants

Week 12: at Jacksonville Jaguars

Week 13: vs. Buffalo Bills

Week 14: at Dallas Cowboys

Thanksgiving Day games

Week 15: at Cincinnati Bengals

Week 16: at Baltimore Ravens

Week 17: vs. Pittsburgh Steelers

Standings

References

External links

1997 Tennessee Oilers
at Pro-Football-Reference.com {{DEFAULTSORT:1997 Tennessee Oilers Season Tennessee Oilers Tennessee Titans seasons

Titans In Greek mythology, the Titans ( ; ) were the pre-Twelve Olympians, Olympian gods. According to the ''Theogony'' of Hesiod, they were the twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (mythology), Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). The six male ...