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Well that’s interesting: the New Orleans Saints are expected to play a 2022 home game in London during the upcoming season, as part of the NFL’s international series. NewOrleans.Football’s Nick Underhill first reported the news, clarifying that the game is expected to kick off at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The 62,850-seat venue hosted matchups between the Atlanta Falcons and New York Jets as well as a Jacksonville Jaguars-Miami Dolphins tilt in 2021.
The Saints have made the trip to London twice before, playing both games in Wembley Stadium — and winning each time, defeating the then-San Diego Chargers in 2008 and shutting out the Dolphins in 2017. They’re undefeated in international play.
It hurts to see New Orleans lose a home game, especially after their 2021 season opener was relocated to a neutral site in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. But the good news is that the Saints will still have eight games to play in the Caesars Superdome in 2022 by hosting the Las Vegas Raiders as their seventeenth regular season matchup.
And the Raiders may be their opponent in London. NFL ownership voted in 2021 to expand the international series to at least four games each season; two will be played in London, with one game also being hosted in Mexico City and Germany, beginning in 2022. Each team will have to play a “home” game internationally once every eight years under this new setup, meaning the Saints won’t have to do it again until 2030.
They also agreed that these must be matchups between NFC and AFC teams. Of the Saints’ three AFC home opponents in 2022, that includes the Raiders, Baltimore Ravens, and the Cincinnati Bengals. Surely the NFL won’t make all the former Saints players and LSU college talent in Cincinnati have their Louisiana homecoming abroad, right? We’ll know for sure when the NFL schedule is released in mid-May later this spring.
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