Published October 26, 2026 05:17 PM
On Sunday, Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers claimed that, during the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations, a discussion was had regarding the possibility of a full-blown “international week.” With all 32 teams playing in foreign countries on the same weekend.
It sounded odd, and impractical. As best we can tell, it was never a serious consideration during the 2020 CBA talks — if it was even a consideration at all.
While it’s possible that the league chose 17 regular-season games over the ability to stage up to 16 annual international games, there was never a specific plan to play all 16 international games in the same week.
It’s borderline ludicrous on it’s face. No games in any U.S. stadiums? Sixteen games played all over the world? With a Thursday night game, 14 on Sunday, and one on Monday night? It would be a logistical nightmare for the NFL, which would be staging a full slate of games in foreign soil in the same four-day window.
The goal was, and still is, to turn the European games into a TV package, with multiple games starting at 9:30 a.m. ET. Emptying the international tank on one and only one weekend would make no sense.
And there’s no way the NFL would have accepted 16 international games plus two byes. The league experimented with two byes in 1993, and the networks hated it. A second bye extends the season, but it dilutes the number of games played in plenty of weeks with byes.
In 1993, eight of 28 teams were off in Week 3, Week 4, Week 6, and Week 8. Six teams were off in Week 6, Week 11, and Week 13. Four teams were off in Week 10. And two teams were off in Week 12.
While two byes may be needed to sell an 18-game season to the players, the league wouldn’t have added a second bye to a 16-game season. (Indeed, it didn’t add a second bye to a 17-game season.)
More importantly, and despite Rodgers’s claim, a full-league international week never was (and never will be) a realistic possibility.