The NFL will tell you international expansion and player safety enhancements are among its goals for the near future. Games being played in England, Mexico and Canada are examples of the former, and after the saga of the last few weeks, Antonio Brown can tell you all about the latter.
Yet Thursday night's incident in Winnipeg, where the Packers played the Raiders on an 80-yard field due to a fear of injury caused by holes in the end-zone turf, makes the NFL seem disingenuous in its player safety efforts as it forces its way into new markets.
Thursday night's long story short: The removal of the CFL goal posts for the Week 3 NFL preseason game at IG Field left some unstable turf in the end zones. Packers and Raiders officials examined the patches in question, and judging by Green Bay's decision to sit 33 players, the holes were deemed unsafe.
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The NFL decided to shorten the field in an effort avoid the end zones. Pylons would be placed between the 10-yard lines and the goal lines to mark the new end zones for the game, and there would be no kickoffs.
That square patch is where the CFL goalpost would be. The covering of that square has drawn some attention here at IG field. pic.twitter.com/FMjhYM0X9b
— Wayne Larrivee (@waynelarrivee) August 22, 2019
The result was, frankly, the rarity that is an interesting NFL preseason game. Oakland outscored Green Bay 22-21 in a contest defined by unique optics thanks to the altered field.
The problem: The NFL's explanatory statement on the reconfigured field claimed "the field met the mandatory practices for the maintenance of surfaces for NFL games based on an inspection" Wednesday.
This represents a disconnect between the league and its teams regarding the definition of a safe field — and player safety in general.
"We made the adjustments we felt were in the best interest of our football team, and we moved forward,” coach Matt LaFleur said of the Packers' last-minute decision to bench 33 players before kickoff in Winnipeg, illustrating that the best interest of the team did not match the best interest of the NFL.
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This is the NFL's second failed attempt in two years to carry its product across international borders. Last year's Chiefs-Rams game, which was scheduled to be played on "Monday Night Football" in Mexico City's Estadio Azteca, was moved to Los Angeles due to poor field conditions. And though games in London have been played on schedule, many of the contests in England have been plagued by sloppy surfaces.
One of the NFL's recent struggles in this regard domestically is worth mentioning, too. As part of its 100th year celebration, the NFL decided to make the Bengals open their 2019 training camp with a practice at the University of Dayton in the town that hosted the first ever NFL game. On a field Cincinnati wide receiver Tyler Boyd described as "terrible," star wideout A.J. Green hurt his ankle.
The underlying theme is simple: The league is trying to expand to new markets without properly vetting the safety of the resources it can leverage in those markets. It's par for the course for an organization governed largely by greed and seemingly inconvenienced by the issue of player safety.
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To teams, coaches and players, the league's international initiative is a nuisance more than anything. Logistics, though, are manageable. When it comes to player safety on foreign playing surfaces, the NFL needs to take a step back and re-evaluate its own standards.
This should be simple. While international games are in the best interest of only the NFL and its fans in the markets the league visits, proper preparation for those international games is in the best interest of everybody.
As it did in Mexico a year ago, the NFL gambled on the field in Canada, and it lost. Nobody — not even the house — won this bet.
So if the league wants to treat its product like a traveling circus, that's fine. But it can't treat its players like clowns. Their safety should feel like less of an obligation and more of a requirement.