Nick Wright's 'International Week' Idea for the NFL May Actually Be Perfect

Now this is putting on your thinking cap, folks.

This should be implemented no later than the 2026 NFL season. What we have right now is a 17-game schedule where some teams play nine home games, some play eight, some are in London for weeks at a time, others never have to leave the United States. The whole thing is a mess and creates a competitive imbalance, which is why I love this idea from Nick Wright.

An International Week would 1) balance the schedule for every team into an 8-8-1 format, 2) create a week during the season where there is NFL football every night, 3) make the day after the Super Bowl a de facto national holiday by moving the schedule back a week to conclude the season on Presidents' Day weekend and 4) make the NFL a shitload of money, which is obviously why this would even be a possibility to begin with. It's perfect.

The NFL is clearly dead-set on expanding its footprint internationally. There were five international games in 2024, including the first ever game in South America and 2025 will have at least five again, with confirmed games in England, Spain, Germany and the first regular season game in Ireland. I can't imagine the League not being intrigued at a week where it could have 16 games across every continent.

And then there's just the simple beauty of getting a week of nothing but football that would turn the day after the Super Bowl into a national holiday. The NFL already figured out how to make the schedule work playing games on a Wednesday this past season, which was seemingly the only day you couldn't play an NFL game. But now everything is on the table.

Feed me International Week.