Aaron Rodgers endorsed the introduction of an international week to the NFL season as he led the Pittsburgh Steelers to victory over the New Orleans Saints at the Stade de France in Paris on Sunday. Rodgers and the Steelers made history last year when they beat the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL's Dublin debut at Croke Park, before travelling overseas again this week to deliver another milestone moment for the league in the French capital. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell revealed on Friday that the league has plans to play a game in Tokyo, Japan in either 2027 or 2028, with wider ambitions of reaching 16 international games per season.
"I really look forward to that. We know that soccer worldwide probably has the most amount of fans. If you watch the World Cup at all, you know how fanatical the people for their country teams are.
But the NFL is still shown in a number of countries, the Super Bowl is shown in over 100 countries; the reach of the league is fantastic," said Rodgers. "I think I always wanted to be a part of it. I remember the 2011 CBA, there was talk about expanding the amount of international games, didn't really a whole lot until the second CBA.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "And there was talk about doing an international week, where you had games in 16 different places and you just added an extra bye week. I think it would have been phenomenal for the game. "Now that the owners want to push for 17 games for the extra revenue and because they care so much about player safety.
But it would have been nice." Sunday's game in Paris featured as part of a record nine international games being played during the 2026 campaign, joining Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro as the league's newest host territories. The NFL will now head to Madrid, Munich and Mexico City over the next month amid what has taken shape as a Formula 1-style format. "You could do obviously Canada, you could do Mexico," Rodgers continued.
"There's been games in Brazil. You could probably open up another country in South America. Obviously there's a lot of opportunities in Europe, Ireland is fantastic, France, Spain, Germany, multiple games in England.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
