Every year, the arrival of the first NFL game in London brings with it some sort of strategic news leak aimed at goosing interest in American football.
International games are trash and completely undermine the competitive integrity of the sport.
Someone needs to assassinate Rodger Goodell.
I’ll buck the comment trend here and say as a non US fan, international games are great. I think the NFL should do as many as are feasible without taking away home games from home city fans and without adverse effects on players.
I’m in Australia which is possibly going to get a game in 2025. Hopefully it will come to Melbourne but if it’s Sydney I’ll definitely fly up regardless of who is playing. It opens up the sport to international fans and grows the game.
No one cares about home games.
It’s a dogshit excuse for football because it makes it impossible for teams to be physically or mentally prepared. It completely destroys the competitive balance of the sport. Single broken games are a huge deal in a short season.
Does this mean that American Football players are just worse athletes than players of other sports?
Because I’ve never heard this terrible excuse used for international football, rugby, tennis.
No, it means football is incredibly physically and mentally demanding and it’s literally impossible to recover and implement a gameplan in less than the week.
There’s a reason there has never once in the history of the sport been high quality execution on a non-opener Thursday night game or a single international game. The entire schedule of a full week is necessary to play anything resembling NFL football, which is already heavily compromised by the obscene limitations on practice time.
16 international games per year is too many. 16 neutral-site games, with some International and some at those large college stadiums, would be awesome.
Imagine Steelers-Eagles at Penn State, or Browns-Bengals at Ohio State.
