Five Wide 2023: Week Five

Every year, without fail, that question rears its head: What’s next? What comes next for the NFL outside of the United States? Will the international games see an expansion? Is the plan of a permanent franchise stationed overseas still on the cards? What’s next? From my standpoint, it felt like the prospect of a London franchise, for example, was not the priority for the NFL, and they’d sooner have every team playing at least once overseas every season. I think Sunday pushed the idea of the overseas franchise(/franchises?) back into consideration.

One of the prominent arguments against an overseas expansion has been that of competitiveness. Can teams based outside of the US really compete with the rest of the NFL, when they have to travel as far and as often as they might have to? The Jaguars playing back-to-back games here proved to be an interesting experiment, in that regard. One game at Wembley against a side that isn’t so hot, and another at Tottenham against a side that is very much at the top table. They got it done. Both times. And, let’s be honest, never looked like losing in either fixture.

There are two ways of looking at Sunday’s 25-20 Jaguars victory. Either, the Jaguars received some sort of unfair advantage by stationing themselves in London for 10 days, or the Jaguars proved that it doesn’t matter where you play, planning, execution, and talent, is the best advantage. I’m leaning towards the latter, and I think the NFL will want to explore this further. So, I’m making a prediction: within the next 3 seasons, the Jacksonville Jaguars will either play 2 overseas games in 2 different countries (Republic of Ireland and UK), OR two home games in London in non-consecutive weekends. Let’s really explore just what you can do to a team before pushing all our chips into that suggested European division.