GRcade

Corazon de Leon wrote:A few teams have gone down the retro route recently I think - I noticed one of the teams in the Green Bay vs. San Diego game last week was wearing a similar one. Not sure why.

Money. Its another jersey they can sell. They call em throwback jerseys and every team does them.

Green Bay Packers @ Carolina Panthers is the next Live game to be shown for free on Pick TV on Sunday, 8th November at 5.30pm.

Steve Smith tore his Achilles too :'(

Hes a hell of a player to watch. Im hoping he uses the injury to rest up and rehab and comes back for one last tour, be a shame to see a player like that go out on an injury.

yeah i wonder if it will make him want to do one more year... he must be tempted to take it as a sign and pack it all in tho

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/american-football/34707958

Interesting, NFL will be coming to twickenham from 2016 on a three year deal, I believe that it is one game a year, deal is for a minimum 3 games.

Oh, I bet the Americans are just thrilled to bits with all these games leaving the US...

KK wrote:Oh, I bet the Americans are just thrilled to bits with all these games leaving the US...

That's the thing, it's a very expensive sport to follow, u only get a quarantee 8 home games if u follow a team in the states and it looks almost like they are heading to a point where every team will play a game abroad in the near future. Don't forget NFL also have a deal with Tottenham from 2018. I suspect that once the new Spurs stadium is complete that the twickenham deal won't be renewed and that the twickenham deal crosses over with that Spurs one by a year in case there's delays in the new stadium which I fully expect as there's a few issues to iron out with listed buildings still.

As a Londoner all this is of course great for our economy, but to look at it impartially, why is it always London? You've got the whole of the UK, hell the whole of Europe...everything is now so focussed on London it's unbelievable. The Millennium Stadium for example is exceptional.

Theres a number of reasons why London keeps getting the games, a couple of smaller ones like its easy to get to, its a big internationally known city etc but you have some specific reasons the NFL likes it. The first is the stadiums are big enough, the NFL need to tarp over the first few rows so people can see over the teams standing on the sidelines so they need massive stadiums, this was the main reason Wembley was chosen initially I believe, they could cover ten rows and still have 80,000 in attendance, why by the way puts it near the top of NFL stadium capacity.

Then you have the dressing room issue, most stadiums here are built to accommodate 20 or so players plus a couple of coaches per side and a team of about 4 refs, the NFL require space for 53 players plus around 10 coaches, ballboys, water carriers, equipment guys for each side side plus 7 refs, all those people need a lot of room to prepare, not every stadium has that kind of space available.

I also think that at this stage the NFL just likes London, they know what theyre doing there, they know the people there and they know theyll be able to put on a good show, if they went to a new city every time then thats a whole new set of people running things and a whole new set of people who dont know what theyre doing and the chances of some problems is much higher.

Apparently there will be 5 London games in a couple of years, theyre trying to push that to 8 to see if they can sustain the numbers for a full home game slate and then theyll look to put a team there permanently if that goes well. Id wager that if attendances start to drop a bit then we could see the games spread to other cities to reinvigorate interest but as long as the games in London sell out they will keep putting them there.

For me personally Ive done the London games three times, once to just see a game when it was the Saints and Chargers and Ive been to both the Patriots games, I dont see myself going back again unless its the Patriots, I would imagine a lot of fans feel that way by now, theyll go when its their team but they wont bother if its 2 teams they dont care about.

Great conclusion to the free Green Bay/Carolina game on PICK.

BTW, the NFL Gamepass is now available on the US PlayStation 4 Store.

Vikes 6-2 after beating the Rams in overtime. Skol Vikes!

Bears win!

What a game by Jeffrey and Langford, needed them to step up with Forte out. Also anyone seen the game winning TD by Miller?

twitter.com/NFL/status/663935510365114368

Detroit Lions v Kansas City Chiefs got 26,000 on the BBC Red Button & 53,000 on Sky Sports for a grand total of 79,000, making it the least watched International game ever. These don't include those that may have been watching on the BBC Sport app though. Ratings for Sky Sports' games are continuing to decline too; Dallas against the New York Giants on Sunday managed just 25,000 viewers.

I wonder if more people are watching on GamePass this season? This doesn't exactly bode well for expanding the game. NFL is way, way down the pecking order of sports (football, WWE, darts, MotoGP, F1, WRC, snooker, athletics, tennis, cycling, rugby, golf and cricket all rate higher). How the NFL UK guy can keep coming on TV and saying NFL is 'one of the top rated sports in the UK' with a straight face I have no idea.

I would say a lot of that is people lost to Gamepass, it costs less than sky and you dont have to put up with the talking heads in the studio. Sky would almost be better off just running Redzone as the main feed and putting a couple of games on the red button. The only reason I dont have Gamepass this season is I moved out to the country and my internet isnt up to the task. As soon as I get good broadband again Im cancelling Sky sports.

Another problem Sky and the NFL are having now is the game is less of a novelty, its not enough to just show it any more, the fans know what good football is supposed to look like so they dont bother with the crap games.

Another rivalry tonight: Bills vs Jets

Think it will be a close match.

I cant get over how bad the Broncos were last night, so bad that Peyton was benched and Brock Osweiler was put in. Im pretty sure its the first time hes been benched by coaches decision too, super weird it happened on the night he broke the all time passing record as well.

Vikings 7-2, Green Bay next at U of M BRING IT ON mummy strawberry floaters!

Green Bay cant lose 4 in a row can they? Really? Can they? Yes, yes they can, should be a hell of a game.

Chicago to sneak in to a wild card place ahead of Green Bay?