Rich Eisen is one game into the NFL European tour and the travel bug has bitten. After calling Sunday’s game between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Jets, he will be back at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday before a separate trip to Germany next month.
“I love it. I mean, I’d love to call a game where I’m not insanely jetlagged. But other than that, I do love coming here. I love the city, I love the people, I love the fans. I love the atmosphere. Truly, it’s a blessing to be in Tottenham. And I can’t wait for next weekend.”
Speaking to The Athletic, Eisen has something he wants to get off his chest.
“I’ve been getting quite a roasting in the great upper midwest, in Minnesota, for having been a homer for the Jets — but I will tell you this. Anybody who knows me knows that the opportunities I get to call these games are very important to me. I cherish them, and the last thing I’m going to do is spend a split second turning myself into a homer, knowing that that would alienate half the viewers. That’s not what I want to do, or would ever think of doing.
“That’s why it’s called broadcasting, right? It’s not narrowcasting, it’s not Jets casting. All I wanted was a tight game. We got one. And I truly loved the ending — it was intense, with Aaron Rodgers having the ball in his hands and then it winding up in the hands of somebody who has tormented them before in Stephon Gilmore.
“If it wasn’t Sam Darnold beating the Jets with one final throw, you’d have to choose Stephon Gilmore being the defender to have that sort of ironic ending for the Jets if they weren’t going to win — and it sure looked like they weren’t going to when it was 17-0. So I was genuinely excited to see a tight game.”
Eisen was happy it was a tight game between the Vikings and the Jets (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
On the Rich Eisen Show last week, Eisen said Kevin O’Connell’s Vikings were the real deal. After watching them go 5-0 in London, he stands by that.
“The head coach is brilliant. He’s a really good man, and he’s got a firm finger on the pulse of his team, not just its figurative heartbeat, but its brain as well. He knows exactly what these guys can handle.
“He knows exactly how — with Brian Flores, the defensive coordinator — to make things more consumable for his players, who are very high-IQ all over the place.
“The Vikings won that game, and now they have a bye.
“Take a look at the rest of that division. You’ve got the Lions clearly being the class of the rest of it, and the Bears trying to get their footing under themselves. And they took a large stride in that regard on Sunday, and we’ll see them next week here in London. And then, you’ve got the Packers who are getting their footing onto themselves as well. It’s a very tough division, but they are there. They’re in front at 5-0, and looking really good doing it.”
NFL Network will be broadcasting from north London as Chicago play host to the Jacksonville Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. A first win of the season last weekend over Indianapolis sees Jacksonville at 1-4 as they jet into London with a losing record again (they are 0-8-3 flying in).
Eisen feels it is a good time for the team to be in their home away from home.
“It’s tough to be away (for an extended period), but the Jaguars could use it. They’re probably 100 per cent looking forward to getting away from it all after a 1-4 start.
“And I know they’re feeling better about themselves because they won, but having them hunker down here, where they’re comfortable playing, they’re used to playing… They have a history of winning and also turning around a season, if it’s necessary. And it does appear to be necessary. They’ll relish that.”
It will be the 38th game played in London and the first to see two No 1 overall draft picks go toe-to-toe.
While Trevor Lawrence landed in one of the worst spots in NFL history (largely due to the Urban Meyer fiasco), Caleb Williams is in a different, happier situation.
“Caleb is fortunate that he was drafted first overall by a team that was using its pick there because the worst team in the league had traded it to them. So Caleb did not join the worst team in the NFL. He joined a team that was a little bit more ready for him. And we’ll see how they look against Jacksonville. As we pointed out, this NFC North appears to be the deepest end of the NFL pool this year.“
For the second consecutive year, the Jags will stay in England for nine nights. They are due to land on Friday — although Hurricane Milton has delayed their departure. The Jags will depart immediately after their match-up at Wembley with the New England Patriots on October 20.
“It’s a major competitive advantage for them over New England,” Eisen says. “And for the Patriots, they’ll have to deal with a team already used to the time zone — but it is something any team can overcome. I don’t think it’s going to be decisive.”
Eisen speaking at an event in 2024 (Olivia Wong/Getty Images)
Since Wembley hosted the first competitive regular season game outside of North America in 2007, there have been 46 games played in London, Mexico City, Munich, Frankfurt and Sao Paulo. Talk of a franchise in London has hushed but Eisen sees a continental future for the NFL.
“I think that’s the way it’s going to go, I just don’t know if an NFL franchise could be successful or viable overseas, because of so many different factors.
“The NFL would be up for having an international package of games that could then be packaged together and sold off to another bidder for a ton of money — and we’re seeing it already being cobbled together.
“People in the States love that fourth window of football. In the U.S., It’s a 1pm Eastern, 4pm Eastern, 8:20pm Eastern start times. On Sunday, if you add a 9:30am Eastern start time — it is early for the West Coast, 6.30am — but folks dig that fourth window of football, and if that’s done with regularity, you wouldn’t hear a lot of pushback from NFL fans.”
Next month, Eisen returns to Germany. After last year’s double-header in Frankfurt, Munich’s Allianz Arena hosts its second game. “That was an incredible scene, just stupendous. So I look forward to going back there, and do hope the Panthers improve a bit by the time I see them. And the Giants took a nice leap for mankind to make that Munich game a little bit better,” Eisen says.
Next season, the NFL will enter new territory, with the 85,000-seater revamped Santiago Bernabeu hosting the NFL’s first game in Spain. Eisen is pumped for that one.
“Oh, I would love to do that,” he says. “But then again, I just don’t know what the NFL’s plans are — to put that on NFL Network, or they’ll do for Madrid what they did with Brazil, which is, have that be the first international game right out of the gate on the Friday after the Thursday. I don’t know if that’s going to be a new position.
“At some point, I imagine there will be consecutive games, week in and week out, played in the first window of time in the United States, in a foreign location in Europe, most likely. It would be a perfect time of day there to then beam it back into the United States as the first game of the day on a Sunday.
“Madrid is going to be part of this world. And then Rome, Paris, and other places in Europe. Dublin would be awesome. I would sign up for that in a heartbeat since we’ve already seen college football games fare so well there. I’d be way in on that. Scandinavia… let’s go!”
(Top photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
