Today the NFL announced the teams who would play host in their international games this season. The Raiders are, of course, not among them. They played host in international games five times from 2014-19 while they still played their *actual* home games in the old Oakland Coliseum.
They paid their debt as host so that now that they have their new stadium in their new home in Las Vegas, other teams get to send their home games overseas. But that doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t get asked to make one of their road games a little bit of a longer flight.
The host teams that were announced today are as follows:
Cardinals in Mexico
Saints in London (Tottenham)
Packers in London (Tottenham)
Jaguars in London (Wembley)
Buccaneers in Germany
The Raiders have a home game against the Cardinals this season and don’t face the Buccaneers, so we know right off the Raiders won’t be playing in either Mexico or the inaugural international game in Germany.
The Raiders do, however, face both the Saints and Jaguars on the road this season, leaving open the possibility of one of those games being the one held in London, either at Tottenham or Wembley Stadium.
You might recall, the Raiders faced the Bears in the first-ever NFL game at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium back in 2019. It was the Raiders’ last international game. The previous two London games the Raiders played were in Wembley Stadium in 2014 and 2018. Their other two international games were in Mexico in 2016 and 2017.