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The NFL games in London are a nightmare. Why are they so bad?

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The United States and Great Britain are firmly linked by the bonds of history, and there are many similarities between the two countries. And yet, there are also differences: in the United States you drive on the right side of the road, in the United Kingdom you drive on the left. America has the imperial system of measures, while England has the metric system. Also two different footballs are popular in these countries: in the USA - with an oval ball, in Britain - with a round ball. The Americans, however, have long been trying to remedy the situation and make their soccer a bit more popular in Europe.

Since 2007, the NFL has "exported" games to England in order to increase overseas audiences. The league even negotiated with the AFL team, Tottenham Hotspur, to help build a new stadium to play both soccer and American soccer. In the World League era of American Football, the Monarchs of London played in the old White Hart Lane soccer stadium, with a short field (93 yards) and tiny scoring areas. The new stadium contains everything you need for an oval ball game: large locker rooms for fifty big guys and an artificial turf field with proper markings under the natural turf soccer field. Now London will host at least two games a year for ten years.

The league decided to take a risk. It's hard to imagine that soccer could become even more popular in the United States, where it is already the number one sport. But the U.S. is the only country where American soccer is the most popular sport. So there is not much question about the idea of making it popular anywhere else. But there are a lot of questions about the realization of the idea. Accidentally or deliberately, the NFL sent and continues to send the ugliest games overseas.

This year, the teams played their thirtieth game in London. In none of those thirty games did two teams meet with a positive balance of wins and losses. Simple arithmetic suggests that about half of the teams will have more wins than losses, which means that about one in four matches will be between two such teams. In Game Week 6, 14 matches were played, five of which featured two teams with a positive balance. How is it even possible that in thirty meetings in London this hasn't happened once? Is this some kind of mockery?

This year the league went even further: all four teams that played in London had a negative balance of wins and losses. The Jets and Falcons met in Week 5 with a 1-3 record, and it was awful. You'd think the British had had enough face time with Jets owner Woody Johnson when he was Donald Trump's ambassador to the United Kingdom for four years, but no, you had to watch this nightmare as well.

And just when it seemed like it couldn't get any worse, the NFL hit rock bottom: In Week 6, the Dolphins went 1-4 against the Jaguars, who were going winless at the time. Yes, yes, it was Urban Meyer who went to London. Thank goodness he didn't make it to the pub.

nfl london tottenham hospurfc


If the two countries had agreed to import this or that commodity (meat, for example), there would have been questions about the country that exports rotten meat time after time. Americans invariably send rotten game to London. So what's the problem? Let's find out.

Are the matches in London that bad?

Yes, that bad. Whichever way we look at it, the games in England are terrible:

- Not once have two teams met in London that then made the playoffs. From 2007 to 2019, 12.3% of matches were between two such clubs. Statistically, three or four oppositions in the UK should have met that condition. But no, exactly zero.

- Fifteen of the 30 matches ended by a margin of ten points or more. Not only do mediocre teams play in London time after time, but half of those games don't even carry intrigue.

- The 21 teams that have played in London have finished the season with a positive win-loss balance. However, 16 of those teams in England have faced a club with a negative win balance at the end of the season. So even on those rare occasions when a good team goes overseas, a weak team comes out to play against it, and the match comes out "garbage."

- Only once has a team that played at UK won the Super Bowl in the same season-the Giants in 2007. The same ones that went 10-6 in the playoffs and then did the unbelievable, defeating the Patriots in the finals.

- Previously, 12 teams out of 32 (37.5 percent) made the playoffs. If all four of the "rabble-rousers" who call themselves NFL teams make it past the elimination games this season, it turns out that only 28.3 percent of the teams that played in London made it to the playoffs in the end. Wait a minute... 28.3? "Atlanta played in London? Oops. We had nothing to do with it, it's all numbers.

What's the worst team that played in London?

It's not easy to answer this one, because there were a lot of terrible teams that played in England. Only one team that has played in London has finished the season with 13 or more wins-the Vikings in 2017, when their quarterback was Case Keenum. But as many as seven teams have finished with 13 or more losses. Three of them were picked first in next year's draft.

There are a lot of contenders for worst team: there's the 2019 Bengals, when they valiantly fought for the right to select Joe Burrow in the draft; the 2007 Dolphins, who finished with a 1-15 record and fired head coach Cam Cameron after his first season; the 2011 Buccaneers, who have the sixth-highest passer rating in NFL history; and the 2016 Rams, under Jeff Fisher, with... no, not 7-9, but 4-12. Fisher, by the way, was fired after that season.

But there can only be one winner (loser?), and it's not hard to guess who it is: the legendary 2017 Browns, who never won a game, ranked 31st in offensive rating and 32nd in defensive rating. "Cleveland was only too happy to have the opportunity to play a "home" game overseas in a season that they have blatantly leaked. By the way, the following question arises from this.

Why are all the London games so bad?

Actually, the crappiness of these games is easy to explain. One need only understand how the league chooses which teams play in London. Or rather, it doesn't. The league lets any team voluntarily give up one of its home games.

Teams are only willing to give up a home game if they have nothing to lose. Strong clubs don't give up home games for one simple reason: losing home-field advantage can reduce the likelihood of making the playoffs.

The NFL is very generous in encouraging teams to forfeit a home game: the league reimburses a team for the loss of a home game and pays them $1 million on top. It turns out teams have an opportunity to trade home-field advantage for a million dollars.

This explains not only why the nominal home team is bad, but also why the nominal guests are no better. It makes sense that teams would prefer to take to England those matches that would bring in the least profit at home. Most likely, the stadium will fill up for games inside the division, against the strongest teams and against teams that have fans coming to away games often. The games against mediocre teams with few supporters will remain half-empty. So teams choose the most unattractive match they have to play and send it to London. The only team that has never played overseas is the Packers. That makes sense: they don't want to lose a home game at Lambo Field, and their opponents don't want to lose a game against the Packers, because the Cheeseheads are sure to fill the stands at away games.

That's how the London schedule is set up: bad teams let the NFL send the crappiest games overseas for a small fee. Americans ironically say it reminds them of British cooking: take food no one in their right mind would order, find something in the pantry that is as unappetizing as possible, and serve it all together. Voila: you've got your eels in a jam. Or the Jets vs. Falcons.

Is the league doing anything to improve the quality of games?

At first, the NFL hoped that teams would volunteer to play in London for the sake of popularizing the game and building a fan base in Europe. Obviously, that wasn't enough.

So additional incentives had to be introduced. Now teams that want to host the Super Bowl and make a huge financial profit from it have to play in London. "The Rams, Buccaneers and Falcons played games in England before hosting the main game of the year.

A team that wants to move to another city temporarily or permanently has to play overseas, too. And they don't mind - nothing undermines attendance like the statement that the club doesn't care deeply about its fans, and there are other places to make more money. "The Raiders played in London two years in a row, in 2018 and 2019, before moving from Oakland to Las Vegas.

But the league has found a solution that will, for once, lead to good games overseas: starting in 2022, the divisions will take turns playing overseas. That way, the impact of those games on a team's chances of making the playoffs will be reduced, because all four teams in the division will be on equal footing. And since the season now consists of 17 games, each team will still get to play 8 "real" home games.

Why are the Jaguars constantly involved?

Blake Bortles would be much better suited for a crown than a helmet, because he is the real English King. He has 1,209 passing yards in London, his closest pursuer has 647. Among all quarterbacks, Blake has the most passing touchdowns, receiving touchdowns and victories in the English capital. Unfortunately, he did not have such success in America.

"The Jaguars have become frequent visitors to London. Since Shed Khan acquired the team in 2012, they have played in England whenever possible. They were scheduled to play there twice last season, but because of the pandemic, those games had to be played in America.

So why do the Jaguars end up overseas so often? First of all, Jacksonville is a small town. Of all the cities that have an NFL club, only Buffalo and Green Bay are second in population to a city from Florida. Second, the club is relatively young -- only the Texans appeared in the league after the Jaguars. But the main factor is that the team from Jacksonville has always played, to put it bluntly, so-so. Only the Lyons and Browns have had more losses since 2000 than they have. The result is a small-town team with no club history that loses an average of 10 games a season. Jaguars fans are often ridiculed for not being particularly eager to attend home games, but given the circumstances, they are very committed to their club.

When Khan bought the team in 2012, he moved to London. He also owns the Fulham soccer team, which is constantly going in and out of the AFL. (The Jaguars would suffer the same fate if the worst teams in the NFL went to a worse league.) Hahn likes to party his way through the weekend, attending Jaguars and Fulham games and partying on a huge yacht with expensive champagne.

As Hahn himself explained, the club makes more money per match in London than it does per match in Jacksonville (and that's without counting the extra million). A single match in Great Britain accounts for 15 percent of the team's total annual revenue. "The Jaguars are the eighth most popular team in London. They own the exclusive right to advertise their club in England - other teams can only advertise matches with their participation. The Jaguars even have their own office in London.

Khan said his contract with the English capital expired last year, but that didn't stop them from playing another match there. There was even talk that Khan would move the team to London if he could, but Shed himself denies it. Hahn has invested a lot of money in upgrading the stadium in Jacksonville, and he himself believes that the extra revenue from games overseas will keep the team viable. Strange logic - does a man with a fortune of $7 billion and a super-duper yacht need a couple of extra millions to keep the club alive?

Putting down roots in London to get a foothold in Jacksonville is just like relying on a college coach who has had trouble building a culture within the club in the past to bring the team wins. Nah, that's not how it works.

Why London?

It's no secret that American soccer is gaining popularity outside of the States. Sure, there are plenty of fans in England, but not many. According to a survey that was conducted on the Internet, the most American soccer fans are in... Brazil. The UK is not even in the top 5.

In Europe, Germany has the most fans of the game of oval ball. It is telling that "NFL Europe" originally had teams from England, Scotland and Spain, but at the end there were five teams from Germany and one from Holland. In England, there were 10,000 people at the games, and in Germany, 30,000. Compare yourself: Here's the final of the German championship.

Overall, the quality of the league is not that much inferior to the NFL: the stadium is brand new, tens of thousands of fans are shouting at the top of their lungs, the broadcast and graphics are quite good. And then there's the British championship final, which looks a lot more like a Division III college game: hardly a hundred spectators, the markup is on a soccer field, and the broadcast is on YouTube.

It's not really clear why London was chosen. I guess the league didn't really care. London sounds cool, and they also speak English there. For the same reason, the MLB played their games in England a few years ago, though you can find at least a dozen countries where baseball is more popular. The NFL seems to be planning to play games in Germany in the future. Hopefully, at least they won't send the Jaguars there.

What was the worst game in London?

Here's what you've been waiting for: a list of the worst games in London. Almost all of the games were so-so, so there's plenty to choose from. Jameis Winston once threw five interceptions. Case Keenum threw four. Drew Stanton managed exactly zero points when he took the field after Carson Palmer's injury (the Cardinals lost 0-33). But there are three games that perfectly illustrate just how much of a failure the London experiment was.

3. "Bengals - Washington: 27-27 (10/30/2016).

The game seemed tight, but that doesn't mean it was interesting. In overtime, the teams' possessions went as follows:

- Pant.

- Pant.

- Field goal attempt - missed

- Fumble.

- The end of the game.

The most memorable moment was Dustin Hopkins' 34-yard field goal miss. A reporter from German television tried to interview the Washington kicker, but a member of the club's PR department prevented him from doing so.

All right, the Brits aren't used to soccer games ending in a draw. And they know firsthand about the missed field goal at key moments.

2. "Saints vs. Dolphins: 20-0 (10/1/2017).

Jay Cutler apparently had a hard time playing in London. His team gained only 186 yards, but committed 11 fumbles that cost them 90 yards. But the most memorable moment perfectly embodied Cutler's attitude in this game: that famous Wildcat formation in which Jay didn't make a single move.

1. "Giants - Dolphins: 16-13 (10/28/07).

We already mentioned that the 2007 Giants were the only team to play in London and then win the Super Bowl. We also mentioned the Dolphins, who finished that season with one single win. Since 2007, only five games have been played between the club that won the championship and the club that got the first pick in the draft. One of those matches took place in London, and it was particularly awful.

Eli Manning gained 59 yards through the air, completing only eight passes out of 22. Zero touchdowns, as many interceptions. He just threw balls everywhere and didn't hit receivers very often. However, he did manage to score a touchdown on the ground, which says a lot about the Dolphins' level of defense. Allowing Eli Manning to gain 10 yards on the ground takes some skill. Miami's passer was Cleo Lemon, who, among other things, swung for a throw on one play and ... dropped the ball, which was picked up by Michael Strahan. In addition, the field was falling apart before our eyes, with the grass being ripped out in shreds at almost every play.

The good team played bad, the bad team played terrible. Both teams failed to gain even 250 yards on offense - by comparison, that only happened twice in 2020. Looking at the score, you'd think the game was tight, but no: The Dolphins were losing 6-16 almost until the very end of the game, and they only managed to score a touchdown in garbage time.

But most interestingly, this game was the first game played in London. It's pretty clear that games in London are cursed and have always been cursed.

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