Tag: International Series

NFL heading to Germany in 2022; could Cowboys make the trip?

America’s Team seems like a strong contender for the NFL’s first-ever game on the European mainland, but a trip to Mexico seems more likely. | From @ToddBrock24f7

In the immortal words of Hank Williams Jr. (but translated roughly by Google):

Bist du bereit für etwas Fußball?

The NFL is headed to Germany, as the league has announced plans to play a regular-season game in Munich for the first time next season. The game will expand the NFL’s International Series beyond London and Mexico City.

Five games are set to be played outside the United States in 2022, meaning ten teams will need to pack their passports along with their shoulder pads at some point. And while schedule info won’t be released for a while, the writing on the wall- in whatever language you choose- says the Cowboys could well be making an extra-long business trip in the coming year.

The newly-announced game is slated to be played at Allianz Arena, FC Bayern Munich’s stadium, a stunning facility that can seat up to 75,000 and has an exterior made of color-changing inflated plastic panels. While the 2022 event will be the first NFL regular-season game to be played in Germany, it won’t be the last; Munich and Frankfurt will share four games over the next four years.

Berlin hosted five NFL preseason games between 1990 and 1994; the Cowboys have never played there. And while it might be tempting to assume that the league might want to make a splash in their first-ever regular-season game on the European mainland by sending America’s Team, it’s more likely that the Cowboys will visit Mexico City in November 2022.

That’s because of the NFL’s International Home Marketing Areas initiative. As announced back in December, the Cowboys were one of 18 teams awarded a license to expand their marketing efforts into another country. Team owner Jerry Jones chose Mexico.

“We have a deep appreciation for our fans in Mexico, as their passion for the Cowboys has been felt from our preseason games played in both Mexico City [three times] and Monterrey [once],” Jones said at the time. “We’re always looking for ways to enhance engagement with our fans in Mexico and are grateful the league has recognized that the Cowboys are uniquely positioned to help grow the game of football in Mexico while growing our community of Cowboys fans.”

The new initiative doesn’t automatically lock the Cowboys into the Mexico City game (or out of an appearance in either London or Munich), but the NFL has said that teams would play in their designated international markets “where possible.”

The Panthers, Chiefs, Patriots, and Buccaneers were granted marketing access to Germany; of those, Carolina and Tampa Bay will have a ninth home game in 2022.  Dallas also plays an extra home date in 2022, meaning the league could assign the Cowboys to “host” an international game and still leave the club its usual eight gamedays in their own stadium.

Jones has already gone on record with a willingness to do just that.

In their only regular-season overseas appearance to date, the Cowboys beat the Jaguars 31-17 at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2014. Every NFL club except the Packers has played at least one international game. Jacksonville has played the most, eight. A resolution passed last year will require every team to play outside the U.S. at least once every eight years.

Of the three London games planned for 2022, the Saints will reportedly play host to an NFC South foe in one of them. Jacksonville is set as the designated home team for another. That’s three of six slots that the Cowboys won’t occupy.

Mexico City hosted one regular-season game in both 2016 and 2017; the scheduled Chiefs-Rams meeting in 2018 was moved to Los Angeles due to poor field conditions at Estadio Azteca. The Chiefs and Chargers played there again during the 2019 season, but the NFL has not been back since.

The league has sited preseason games in Mexico as early as 1978, although a planned 1968 match between the Lions and Eagles was scrapped by Mexican officials, reportedly due to civil unrest in the capital city. The Cowboys played south of the border in 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2001. All were preseason tilts.

It’s a guessing game as to which of the Cowboys’ 2022 home opponents they might face in a possible return to Mexico. It’s hard to imagine the league placing a high-profile NFC East divisional game in a foreign country, so that would rule out the Eagles, Giants, and Commanders. There’s the Bears, Lions, or Colts; those aren’t exactly needle-moving matchups, but the International Series games often feature odd pairings. The Buccaneers would be an anticipated showdown even without Tom Brady, but as mentioned earlier, Tampa Bay could be a strong contender to play the first game in Munich. Cowboys-Bengals will be a huge draw no matter how Cincinnati fares in Super Bowl LVI; that game has primetime TV written all over it and may be too big a ratings bonanza for the league to send outside the country. The Texans have a sizable fanbase in Mexico; they’re also linked to the country in the International Home Marketing Areas initiative; the league could double down with a two-fer with the Cowboys in 2022 or save Houston as the home team for a future Mexico date.

No one can say until schedule details start to come out. Jerry could end up getting all nine of 2022’s home gamedays in Arlington. Or the Cowboys could play a regular-season date in Mexico, in London, or maybe the first game ever in Germany.

But in the long nothingness that is the offseason, it’s wunderbar to think about all the far-flung possibilities.

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Recent poll tabs Dolphins as most popular NFL team in the UK

Recent poll tabs Dolphins as most popular NFL team in the UK

The Miami Dolphins have not enjoyed a great deal of success through the NFL’s International Series. Since the team went overseas to play in London against the New York Giants in 2007 to start the now-annual affair in the United Kingdom, the Dolphins have played a total of four games “across the pond” and sport a 1-3 record in such contests — their only win coming in September of 2014 against the then Oakland Raiders.

But winning hasn’t exactly been a hurdle that needs to be cleared for Miami in terms of establishing popularity for the franchise overseas. The Dolphins are the NFL’s most popular franchise in the United Kingdom according to a recent poll by YouGov, a British Internet-based market research and data analytics firm.

The first two competitors in the International Series hold the top two spots, seeming to indicate that there is a full generation of British fans who had a big impression left on them by that first game back in 2007. But it is pretty incredible for the Dolphins to claim the top spot, considering they haven’t really attempted to barge into the market to the same degree as some other teams across the league. The Jacksonville Jaguars, for example, have played 7 games in the United Kingdom in total — surrendering a home game every single year to play overseas since 2013. And yet the Jaguars didn’t crack the top five most popular teams.

Granted, this is just one poll — but the Dolphins are nevertheless facing a warm welcome any time they head across the pond; an arrangement that was supposed to be in line for Miami in 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic derailed any international play for the NFL this season. Knowing that Miami was due for an international game and pairing that with the team’s popularity overseas, you can be sure it won’t be long before the NFL tabs Miami to pack their bags and head for the United Kingdom again to play. That is, of course, once the COVID-19 pandemic is stabilized and such travel can be normalized once again.

NFL confirms there will be no international games in 2020

NFL confirms there will be no international games in 2020

We do not know the full extent of the Miami Dolphins’ 2020 regular season schedule yet, but there is one thing we do know — the team will be staying states side this fall. The NFL is angling to release their full 17-week schedule for the 2020 regular season at some point throughout the course of this week, but the first heavy hitting news of the league’s calendar is now known.

There will be no international series in 2020.

That’s big news for the Dolphins, as the team was aligned to surrender a 2020 home game this season in order to play abroad — a competitive disadvantage to play eight road games, seven home games and one neutral site contest. But amid the COVID-19 concerns across the country, the league is opting to align their 2020 schedule as such to avoid international travel.

The following statement from the NFL’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy & Growth Officer Cristopher Halpin revealed the decision:

“After considerable analysis, we believe the decision to play all our games domestically this season is the right one for our players, our clubs, and all our fans in the US, Mexico and UK. We greatly appreciate the support of our governmental and stadium partners in Mexico and the United Kingdom, who all agree with this decision, and we look forward to returning for games in both countries in the 2021 season. We also thank our incredible fans in those territories for their passionate support of the NFL. We will continue to serve them through our outstanding media partners and by being active supporters of both grassroots football and COVID-19 relief efforts in Mexico and the UK.”

And so the NFL will continue to forge forward with their schedule release, but with the concession that the international series will be discontinued for the 2020 season in an effort to optimize fan and player safety. The league is expected to drop their full schedule before the end of the week. The chance to play in front of a new, enthusiastic audience is a good one. But the silver lining of gaining and extra home game isn’t a bad one, either.

Report: 2020 schedule to includes 17 weeks; no international games

The NFL is set to release a full schedule for 2020, but will move four international games stateside as stadiums consider social distancing.

The 2020 NFL schedule is coming. It will look different than originally anticipated. It may not look as different as fans had feared. But there will be changes, and one team has already offered a virtual glimpse.

Although the NBA, NHL, NASCAR, the PGA, and Major League Baseball have all been forced to dramatically alter their seasons due to the coronavirus pandemic, the National Football League was granted the luxury of waiting the longest to make any sort of decision that would require asterisks in the record books of the future. Reports now indicate that the league will release its 2020 regular season slate of games by May 9. The schedule will be for a full 17-week campaign that starts on time on September 10.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be some tweaks to the initial plan.

ESPN is reporting that the league will scrap its International Series games for 2020, relocating the four planned contests to their home teams’ stateside stadiums.

As for the stadiums themselves, at least one is already thinking ahead to the logistics of hosting NFL games under current social distancing guidelines. The Miami Dolphins have released a mocked-up look at how the Plexiglas barriers, floor dots, and altered foot-traffic patterns that have suddenly become commonplace at the local grocery store might work on a much larger scale at Hard Rock Stadium on Sundays this fall.

As per ESPN:

“Hard Rock Stadium became the first public facility to earn the Global Biorisk Advisory Council’s STAR accreditation, the standard used for facilities to implement cleaning, disinfecting and infectious disease prevention work practices to control risks involved with infectious agents like the coronavirus. (The GBAC is a division of the ISSA, a worldwide trade association for the cleaning industry.)”

No official plans or standards from the league have been announced; the Dolphins sought help in crafting their plan early.

“When our fans, players and staff are able to return to Hard Rock Stadium, we want them to have peace of mind that we’re doing everything we can to create the safest and healthiest environment possible,” Dolphins president/CEO Tom Garfinkel said. “We didn’t want to create our own standard, we wanted to be accountable to the most credible third-party standard that exists. Working with the GBAC ensures compliances with critical guidelines for the highest standard of cleanliness and it is our hope that other venues will follow suit as we navigate through these unprecedented times.”

Such a strategy would also necessitate a reduced capacity for fans in attendance. Hard Rock Stadium seats approximately 65,000 fans for a Dolphins game, but may be able to hold just 15,000 or so under these guidelines.

AT&T Stadium’s normal setup for a Cowboys game accommodates 80,000. The same math used in the Miami scenario would equate to a home capacity of under 19,000.

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