The NFL announced its nine-game international schedule on Wednesday morning. It’s a massive slate spanning four continents and seven countries, featuring half of the league’s 32 teams.
As promised, the NFL continues to go bigger and bolder with regular season games played overseas. That rapid expansion has made what once seemed like a spectacle spiral into a massive travel and game-prep inconvenience most coaches and players want no part of.
That’s why fans of the Cleveland Browns should be breathing a sigh of relief after their team was passed over for potential games against the Jacksonville Jaguars in London, and the New Orleans Saints in Paris. Those decisions secured the NFL’s second-best travel schedule for the Browns in terms of total air miles to be traveled in 2026.
Per betting market analyst Bill Speros, the Browns will travel 9,073 miles for their road games this season. The San Francisco 49ers? They’re set to make NFL history. Thanks to their two games overseas in Australia (Week 1) and Mexico City (Week 11), they’re set to travel 38,105 total air miles, which includes changing time zones a whopping 58 times.
Overall, according to Speros, NFL teams will travel 628,873 miles this season. “That equals 25.2 trips around the circumference of the Earth, or 2.63 times the distance to the Moon,” he wrote on X.
Retired all-time great J.J. Watt may have revealed how NFL players really feel about the league’s current direction. While these early-morning Sunday games can be fun for fans, the international slate is growing to a point where the people actually traveling, preparing, and playing in the events are reluctantly along for the ride.
International game slate is nearing the realm of traveling circus as opposed occasional showcase.
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) May 13, 2026
J.J. Watt perfectly summed up why Browns fans should be relieved
In theory, the Browns should be a franchise the NFL wants to showcase overseas. In Myles Garrett, they have one of the best and most recognizable players in league history.
Why the Browns weren’t picked this year likely comes down to their quarterback situation. They’re the only team in the league, other than maybe the Arizona Cardinals, who don’t yet have an obvious choice to be the Week 1 starter. Cleveland was rumored to be the favorite to play the Saints in Paris, but the chances of Deshaun Watson playing in that game might have been too high for the league to justify. They’ll hope to squeeze every ounce out of Aaron Rodgers’ fame with the Steelers instead.
All of this is positive for Cleveland. The NFL will announce the full 272-game schedule on Thursday night, but 14 games have already been leaked. So far, none of those games involve the Browns. Another schedule packed with 1 p.m. EST kickoffs (the Browns had 14 of those last year, including Garrett’s record-breaking sack game against the Bengals in Week 18) appears to be coming.
Let’s just take Watt’s word for it — the majority of players and coaches want nothing to do with the NFL’s international circus. The more the Browns play on Sundays in standard TV windows, the better for first-year head coach Todd Monken and his young team this season.
In that sense, the NFL's tendency to ignore the Browns will actually work to the team's benefit.
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