More teams could be making two-game trips to Europe

Every year, the arrival of the first NFL game in London brings with it some sort of strategic news leak aimed at goosing interest in American football. This year, the league is trotting out something other than the same-old “a franchise will move to England within 10 years,” which has been a crutch for well over 10 years.

Via Ken Maguire of the Associated Press, two-game European trips could become more common, as the league moves toward Commissioner Roger Goodell’s stated goal of 16 annual foreign games.

Currently, the Jaguars play back-to-back London games each year, one as the home team and one as the visiting team. Others could follow suit.

And it wouldn’t necessarily be two games in London. It could be one game in London and one in Germany or Spain or France or wherever else in Europe the NFL stages a game.

“There probably will be times where it might make sense for a team to play as a visiting team and then as a home team, and that might be in one market or it could be in Europe as a whole,” NFL UK general manager Henry Hodgson told Maguire. “You would expect that with 16 games a year, those are the kinds of logistical and operational things that we’ll need to be looking at as we expand that way.”

The logistics of having a team play back-to-back European games aren’t nearly as complex as the logistics of moving a team to Europe. Which might explain why the league has abandoned, at least for now, the annual dangling of that specific carrot.

For the players who will be away from home for at last a full week, the logistics won’t be ideal. But, hey, it will be better than the logistics of making a three-game road trip to the U.S. while living in Europe.