List of National Football League retired numbers

Teams in the National Football League (NFL) retire jersey numbers of players who either are considered by the team to have made significant contributions to that team's success, or who have experienced untimely deaths during their playing career. As with other leagues, once a team retires a player's jersey number, it never issues the number to any other player, unless the player explicitly allows it.

Since the NFL began retiring numbers, 139 players have had their jersey number retired. The Chicago Bears have the most retired numbers of any team with 14. Only one player, Reggie White, has had their number retired by two different teams. Three teams – the Oakland Raiders, the Atlanta Falcons, and the Dallas Cowboys – traditionally do not retire jersey numbers, and three others – the Buffalo Bills, the Washington Redskins, and the Pittsburgh Steelers – only do so in extremely rare circumstances. Also without a retired jersey number are the Baltimore Ravens, the Houston Texans, and the Jacksonville Jaguars, although those teams are less than 20 years old (although some numbers have been placed out of circulation).

Unlike Major League Baseball (who retired Jackie Robinson's number) and the National Hockey League (Wayne Gretzky), the NFL has never retired a jersey number league-wide in honor of anyone. Numbers 0 and 00 are no longer allowed, but were not retired in honor of any particular player, since the NFL's positional numbering system, imposed in 1973, does not allocate a position for players wearing those numbers (the NFL did allow those numbers in the past; Johnny Olszewski, Jim Otto and Ken Burrough all wore 0 or 00).

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