Aaron Rodgers’s International Games Plan Has No NFL Support

There is virtually no support among NFL management and team owners for Aaron Rodgers’s suggestion that the league should hold all its international games during a single week of play, sources tell Front Office Sports.

“You’d be competing against yourself” on the international games by playing them during the same week of the season, one source familiar with the sport’s collective bargaining process told FOS, adding: “It’s a nonsensical concept.”

The sources also rejected Rodgers’s portrayal Sunday that such an arrangement was considered during the labor negotiations that led to the 2020 CBA between the league and the NFL Players Association. The quarterback said there was “talk” of it at that time. But such an arrangement was never discussed during formal bargaining, the sources said.

“That’s bizarre,” one source told FOS. “I’m quite sure we never talked about a 16-game season with two byes and 16 international games in one week.”

Another source told FOS: “It never came up.”

Record Slate of Games

The NFL is playing a league-record nine international games this season. They are being played in nine different weeks of the season.

The 49ers and Rams played in Melbourne on a Thursday night (Friday morning in Australia) in the season’s opening week. The Ravens and Cowboys played in Rio de Janeiro in Week 3. That was followed by a game in London on each of the next three Sundays. The Steelers and Saints played last Sunday in Paris in Week 7. There are games to come in Madrid in Week 9, in Munich in Week 10, and in Mexico City in Week 11.

The CBA completed in 2020 allowed the league and owners to increase the regular season from 16 to 17 games.

Of international games, the CBA says: “In any League Year in which the NFL regular season consists of seventeen games, the extra week shall not consist entirely of international games.”

Rodgers Recollects

Rodgers helped the Steelers to a win Sunday in France. Afterward, he spoke at length to reporters about the NFL’s international efforts. Rodgers mentioned the 2020 labor negotiations.

He said “there was talk about doing a week, an international week where you had games in 16 different places and you just added an extra bye week. So you’d play 16 regular-season [games]. You’d have two bye weeks. One of those weeks would have been an international week. I think it’d have been phenomenal for the game.”

Rodgers also said Sunday: “Now, the owners wanted to push for 17 games for the, you know, extra revenue because they care so much about player safety. But it would have been nice.”

Playing all the international games in one week still would be a good idea for future seasons, in Rodgers’s view.

“I think there’s great opportunities for expansion in those things,” he said Sunday. “It’d be awesome to see them, you know, have an international week because I think it’s great for the game and the expansion of the game.”

Rodgers did not specify whether his assertion of “talk” of all international games being played in the same week meant that came up during formal bargaining for the 2020 labor deal.

Pro Football Talk wrote this week, without citing sources, that “[a]s best we can tell, it was never a serious consideration during the 2020 CBA talks—if it was even a consideration at all.”

The sources who spoke to FOS went further than that and clarified that it never was discussed at the bargaining table.

A source familiar with the 2020 labor negotiations told FOS: “I don’t have any recollection of talking about one week of a 16-game season with all the international games in one week. … Think what that would do to your schedule.”

It’s also extremely unlikely to occur in the future, according to that source, who added: “I could see an 18-game season with two bye weeks and 16 international games spaced out over the season.”

Participants in the 2020 CBA negotiations said they recalled Rodgers, then with the Packers, taking part in one bargaining session in Indianapolis but no others.

More to Come?

The NFL might schedule 10 international games next season. The owners’ most recent resolution on the issue allows the NFL to schedule as many as 10 league-operated international games in a season. That does not count games operated by the Jaguars in London.

The CBA makes no such distinction between league-operated games and Jaguars–operated games and says the league and owners must consult with the NFLPA to go beyond 10 international games in a season. Sources recently told FOS there had been no substantive talks yet between the league and union on that topic.

The league and owners seem intent upon eventually going to 16 international games per season—one per team annually—in conjunction with a prospective 18-game regular season. 

The current CBA specifically prohibits the league and owners from unilaterally extending the regular season beyond 17 games, so that’s an issue for bargaining between the NFL and NFLPA. Discussions between the league and union on all CBA-related topics have been on hold while JC Tretter, the NFLPA’s executive director who was elected in March, seeks input from players during his tour of team-by-team meetings.

“I am a fan for playing international games,” Eagles running back Saquon Barkley told Daniel Roberts of FOS. “I loved it. … I’m all about growing the game, right? So I’m all about: How can we make the NFL audience larger? … This is more my business cap I put on, I guess you can say. I love it. I think it’s fun.

“Now, with the players’ safety … I don’t think we should play in London and then come and play a game at home the next week. Maybe a bye week after. … I think Aaron Rodgers kind of spoke about it a little bit. I saw something brief on it. I didn’t really get to read in depth what he said. But yeah, I do think there’s a better way we can handle it after the game. But I am all for growing the game of the NFL and just football in general.”