With the Raiders’ relationship with Oakland dissolved and a year left before they can complete their move to Las Vegas, the team is broaching out-of-the-box options for home games in 2019. One of those options could include playing in London, according to Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer (Twitter link). 
Glazer called the potential move “out of left field,” but mentioned that other owners have discussed the possibility with the team. The NFL has long toyed with the possibility of a franchise calling London home, and this would be the greatest test run the league could hope for.
What the move would look like for scheduling purposes is yet to be determined, but it is sure to be a hectic travel situation with the team playing its games in the AFC West. One possibility that Glazer mentioned would have the Raiders playing four consecutive home games, followed by four straight road contests.
One person who would not be happy with playing the games in London would be Raiders head coach Jon Gruden, according to Des Bieler of The Washington Post. When the team played the Seahawks in London this year, the coach said:
“I get claustrophobic. My son was a weightlifter, and he won a powerlifting competition in Belarus. I had to fly 14 hours. I had to fly home 14 hours. I had vertigo for a month. I couldn’t even lay down, the house was spinning. I am hoping I don’t get vertigo. I’m not a great traveler. I’ll be honest with you. I hate it. I’m not good. I’m concerned. I’m more worried about that than our goal-line offense right now.”
Though it may seem like an outside shot, the fact the Raiders have discussed the move with other owners suggest the team is seriously considering the move and would have approval from at least some of the 31 owners needed to make the move. The team has also been linked with a host of other locations, including Levi’s Stadium and AT&T Park.
smh
Lame
NFL needs to get this London crap out of their heads. Nobody wants to go there. Also, Cal has a massive stadium about 15 miles up the road from the Raiders current stadium that is empty on Sundays.
There’s no way memorial stadium could handle a nfl game lol
Apparently you’ve never been to the coliseum.
Yes more times than I can count, they Atleast have parking lots
I wish the NFL would get all of the Europe crap out of their heads. They couldn’t careless about American football. We gave them NFL Europe and they didn’t support it, why give them one of our NFL franchises?
Great idea! Have a west coast team move to London for a year, that totally won’t be the worst travel schedule of all time. San Diego could be interesting, imagine the Chargers playing a road game there and getting boo’d.
If the leauge makes money they dont care. No matter how ridiculous it sounds as long as the money is there they would do it. International games are awful
I think that would be a cool thing to see for a year
Chucky and the Raiders are the comical farce the Brits have longed for since Benny Hill passed away.
I actually hope they do this with the Raiders next year. I think it’s a truly stupid idea, and until they actually give it a trial run won’t see just HOW many complications this will cause – not to mention unhappy players, owners, fans, etc.
At this point, I doubt they’ll abandon the idea until it hits them over the head with the stupidity of it… What better way to work it out of their system than on a one year trial as opposed to awarding a franchise?
America first dammit
Raiders belong in LA – Chargers in San Diego – and fck the Rams, they can move to Vegas
Dont forget the Santa Clara 49ers.
I doubt the NFL will get this idea out of their head unless they give it a trial run for a year and see just how many problems and unhappy players/coaches/fans this would create. From that perspective, I hope they do give this a go… Better to have a flaming failure on a one year experiment than moving a franchise there.
This is a terrible idea.
Still c the best bet would b playing at UNLV next season. So the employees can get settled into being in Vegas. It’s more important for the lower level employees to get there families settled in if they continue to work for the franchise.
Actually, there are ways it could work. They could play their September non-division/non-conference games against teams from east of the Mississippi in London. Then they could go on the road for October and November, then play December games in AT&T Park. Come to think of it, Giants should be done for the year as soon as the Raiders return, but you can’t count on that when setting up a schedule.
I think this would be great and this NEEDS to happen. Maybe having a team trying to be based out of there for a year is what it will take to get them to drop this insane and completely unworkable idea. It would be much better for the team owners to see this and have it sink in by having a team spend a single season there with somewhere to immediately move back to when it all goes to crap than to have a team planning to make it a permanent home and having the owners determined to stick it out despite all of the problems.
Gruden sounds like an idiot. He travels to 8 road games every season.
Vertigo isn’t caused by travelling anyway. It results from an imbalance inside the ear which upsets your balance. Artillery companies experienced this frequently during battles when firing their big guns.
Take a moment and google “air travel and vertigo.” Many medical experts disagree with you.