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.
Da kommt Großes auf dich zu. #NFL pic.twitter.com/FJtx13VKjI
— NFL Deutschland (@NFLDeutschland) February 8, 2022
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.
Jerry Jones, in an interview on the @dallascowboys website, said the Cowboys would be willing to give up a future home game to play a game in Mexico.
“I would do that to make sure that Mexico and our Mexican fans everywhere understand what our Mexican fans mean to us.”
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) December 21, 2021
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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