The Jacksonville Jaguars and the NFL might be using this upcoming season to test the viability of moving to the United Kingdom permanent basis, Osi Umenyioa believes.
When the NFL schedule was released, there was a history-making moment as it pertained to the league’s London games, as for the first time in the history of the International Series, it was announced that a team would be playing two games outside the United States in the same season.
The Jacksonville Jaguars will first play a ‘home’ game at Wembley Stadium on October the 1st against the Atlanta Falcons before turning around and facing the Buffalo Bills at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium a week later, and according to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell the fun might not stop there.
Speaking during the recent Spring League Meetings (via Dov Kleiman) Goodell said that it was ‘possible’ for a team to play three games in back-to-back-to-back in a season. And once we get to three in a row, we probably know what’s coming next, and that’s a team in the UK permanently.
Which is why Osi Umenyiora believes that this upcoming season will be a significant test of the situation for the Jaguars in London.
Jacksonville Jaguars just that little bit closer to a move?
Speaking exclusively to GIVEMESPORT, the London-born Super Bowl winner discussed how having the Jaguars over here for two weeks would help the team’s ‘brand’ before pointing out what a stretch like that would do for the team’s chances of being here permanently:
Very important, otherwise, what are they doing? Right? They've been here for quite a few years now, every year they're doing more and more things. I think at some point, we have to test the waters, they have to be like ‘Okay, how far can we actually push this? What is the feasibility of having a team here, and these are little steps to actually determine that.’
So it's a very, very important thing. Everybody wants to see how this is going to play out. Not only the Jaguars, I’m quite sure the NFL is looking very, very closely at this to see how this plays out. I'm very, very interested to see what happens. I think everybody here is interested to see what happens. So we're all excited.
London Jaguars still not looking like a reality, for one key reason
It certainly does seem like the NFL is finding new ways to make the Jaguars a permanent fixture in London without just going the whole hog and planting them here, however I wouldn’t be so sure that they will be a permanent thing within the next decade or so. The fact they are putting so much effort into renovating the stadium shows that they are committed to football in Jacksonville, why would they be going through all that just to end up moving?
What the future holds for the team is certainly up in the air, barring a situation where the team is literally split between London and Jacksonville for half the season (similar to the one proposed between Tampa Bay and Montreal for MLB’s Rays) it’s just hard to see how the team is going to juggle satisfying the league’s international desire whilst not totally alienating the people of Jacksonville at the same time.