For a league that often touts its desire to grow its audience in Europe, the NFL has a strange way of showing it.
The matchups the NFL has inflicted on crowds in the United Kingdom and now Germany have almost always been rotten.
There have been 42 NFL games in Europe since the NFL first took its product abroad in October 2007. There are only two have pitted a pair of teams with winning records, a matchup between the Giants and Packers in 2022 and one between the Chiefs and Dolphins last season.
Nine times the NFL has subjected audiences in Europe to a game with at least one winless team. The 2017 Cleveland Browns made an appearance in London en route to becoming the second 0-16 team in NFL history, as did the legendarily bad Urban Meyer-coached Jaguars and a 15-loss Dolphins team quarterbacked by the immortal Cleo Lemon.
It’s like introducing Italian-American cuisine by opening a can of SpaghettiO’s. Or showcase the best of American barbecue by serving a McRib.
The final NFL game on European soil this season is the ultimate battle of ineptitude. Steal your stomach for Bryce Young and the Carolina Panthers (2-7) against Daniel Jones and the New York Giants (2-7). That’s a bigger fit for next year’s draft order than it is for the current playoff race.
The Panthers and Giants are two of seven teams tied for the worst record in the NFL just over halfway through the season. The loser of Sunday’s game will move one step closer to drafting their quarterback of the future or another impact player. Sunday’s winner would still need a miracle to come within striking distance of a play-off bid.
As if watching the Giants and Panthers wasn’t terrible enough, the Munich crowd doesn’t get any rest at halftime. The NFL must act. That is practically an act of war against the Germans.
There is no reason to subject one of America’s closest allies to such punishment, but the NFL has been doing this against Britain for years. By anointing the Jaguars as the London team and now having them play two home games a year across the pond, the NFL has foisted one of its least successful franchises on the British public.
Only twice in the past sixteen NFL seasons has Jacksonville made the playoffs. Only once have the Jaguars won at least one game, in the 2017 season when quarterback Blake Bortles unexpectedly produced brief flashes of competence.
Why hasn’t the NFL prioritized sending better teams to Europe? Maybe because the league doesn’t need it.
Between Europeans curious to watch American football live and expats yearning for a slice of life back home, NFL games have consistently sold out in London and Munich, no matter how gruesome the match was. The crowd of more than 80,000 people often includes fans wearing jerseys and supporting the two teams playing and many of the other 30 teams in the league.
TV viewership for NFL games has also slowly increased in Britain, with a small but dedicated fan base watching more and more games, including last year’s Super Bowl.
For years, top European soccer teams hounded American fans by staging exhibition games against each other. Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City toured the US for weeks last summer, as did Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
The NFL has taken the opposite approach, holding games that count toward the standings in Europe but mostly exporting mediocre matchups. The league appears unwilling to put its most anticipated games in an early Sunday morning time slot, which is inconvenient for many American TV viewers, especially those on the West Coast.
In a recent interview earlier this season, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that American football is “destined to be global.” Goodell expressed interest in holding competitions not only in Europe and America, but soon in Africa, Asia and Australia.
An early warning for foreign fans on those continents: you probably won’t get the best teams or brightest stars either.
