The NFL on Thursday released the list of five designated teams who will play overseas in 2023, and while the Cowboys haven’t been told to update their passports, there seems to be a decent chance they could be heading across the pond next season.
Germany will get two games next year, with exact locations still to be determined. The Chiefs are already set to appear in one of those games; the Patriots will play in the other. While Dallas is poised to take on new England in 2023, it’s already penciled in as a Cowboys home game in Arlington. With AFC squads set to have nine home games next season, they’ll be the “home team” in all international games. So it won’t be Dallas versus New England in Germany.
The Cowboys officially have Mexico as a marketing territory thanks to the league’s International Home Marketing Areas initiative, but there will be no game in that country next season as Estadio Azteca undergoes renovations.
London will host three contests, with the Jaguars slated to play once again at Wembley Stadium, and the Titans and Bills setting up temporary shop at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Mapping out the NFL’s 2023 International Games: pic.twitter.com/TXjBfZeJsg
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 19, 2023
And here’s where it gets interesting.
The Cowboys already know they’ll face the Bills next season, and they already know they’ll have to travel to do so.
Of the Bills’ nine home opponents in 2023, two- New England and Jacksonville- are already hosting their own international games, and it’s hard to imagine the NFL making either club play a European twofer. The Giants and Broncos were just in London last year, and the Buccaneers just played a date in Germany. The Jets and Dolphins took the long flight recently, too: in 2021.
That leaves the Raiders and the Cowboys as the most obvious matchups for Buffalo in that Tottenham tilt.
Las Vegas has played internationally five times, and last did so in 2019.
But since the International Series began, the Cowboys have played just one game on foreign soil, and that was all the way back in 2014. Of the NFL’s 32 teams, only Pittsburgh has gone longer without an overseas trip.
There’s a lot of guesswork and assuming going on here, but it would certainly seem that the Cowboys are overdue for an international voyage.
And the stars have lined up to make it a very real possibility in 2023.
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