NFL says no international games in 2020. Seahawks had a fair chance to be in London
One of the best Seahawks game trips in a generation won’t be happening again this year.
The NFL announced Monday it is canceling its international games for the 2020 season because of coronavirus pandemic that is threatening to change so much about the league and sport this fall.
Arizona had been scheduled to host a game in Mexico City. Atlanta, Miami and Jacksonville had been scheduled to play “home” games in London this coming season.
That meant the Seahawks had three chances to play an international game in 2020; the Seahawks have the Falcons, Dolphins and Cardinals among their eight road games this year. It was widely believed Dolphins-Seahawks was going to be one of the London games, rather than in Miami. That’s because of the huge following of Seahawks fans in the United Kingdom and Europe, and how smashing of a success Seattle’s last trip to England was, in 2018.
The Seahawks’ consecutive Super Bowl seasons while often being featured as the weekly top Sunday game shown in the UK and Europe coincided with the boom in popularity in the NFL across the pond in the last decade.
The Seahawks’ first trip to play in England, during the 2018 season to play the Oakland Raiders, was an extreme cracker of a time. The team stayed at an idyllic, links golf resort in Watford, 20 miles (that’s 32 kilometers, bloke) outside London.
The players had English athletes as tour guides to take them after practices and meetings into London in small groups. Russell Wilson and his teammates also went on a Topgolf outing.
The day before the game, Seahawks fans chanted “SEA! HAWKS!” and other cheers, in multiple languages, through the streets of London. Pubs and restaurants were jammed with 12s. It was a blue-and-green carnival in the city that weekend.
Game day was even more of a bloody good time for Seattle.
The game was supposed to be the first NFL game played in the new palace of the Tottenham Hotspur English football club in north London. But construction delays moved Seahawks-Raiders in 2018 to famed Wembley Stadium on London’s west side. The event attracted 84,922 fans, the largest crowd for an NFL game in the 22 contests over the 11 years the league had staged them in London to that point.
They packed one of the world’s most famous stadiums and saw Tyler Lockett catch one of three touchdown passes from Wilson. Frank Clark chimed all night like Big Ben for 2 1/2 sacks and two sack fumbles that Seattle converted into 10 points. And tens of thousands of Seahawks fans from the Pacific Northwest, the UK, Germany and across Europe roared throughout Seattle’s 27-3 domination of Oakland in the Seahawks’ first-ever game outside the United States.
It was supposed to be a Raiders “home” game that cool, wet Sunday night in London two years ago.
“Amazing. It felt like we were playing another home game,” Lockett said after that game.
“I flew nine hours all the way out here. And all I saw was green and blue.”
Bob’s your uncle, indeed.
The players, almost to a man, said they loved the trip and would come back—provided the league gives them their annual bye week immediately after a London game again, as it did in 2018.
The trip was that good.
But now the COVID-19 virus means Seattle will play at Miami and at Atlanta instead of perhaps the Dolphins or the Falcons in London.
Or, maybe they will.
The league has said it will announce its schedule for the 2020 season this week, by Saturday. The wisdom of doing that right now is debatable, because of the increasing possibility some or perhaps much of what the NFL announces this week will have to be changed or canceled. There is the possibility some states’ governors, including hard-hit Washington and California, will continue to prohibit large gatherings into the fall. That means it’s possible Seahawks games will be played in empty stadiums if there is a season in 2020.
“Who knows? We don’t know,” coach Pete Carroll said two weeks ago. “As somebody said, this is pandemic time, so we’re in a whole new ball game right now. So we have to wait and see.”
This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 11:00 AM.
