What If the NFL Faces (Temporary) Relocation?
What If Some NFL Teams Will Be Homeless in 2020? Get curious with the President/Founder of SportsFormulator, Matt Fischer about the future of the NFL and sports in 2020 and beyond.
The 2020 NFL schedule will be released this week and with so much uncertainty due to COVID-19, we don’t know if games will be played in stadiums with fans or not. All we do know, is the NFL is moving forward and planning to play a full 17 week regular season.
With certain states seeming to look like they may not open in time for the start of the 2020 NFL season in September, it’s time to create contingencies as we are looking at potentially a handful of homeless NFL teams.
I’m looking into my crystal ball and think most states will be back open by September except for New York, New Jersey and California. This leaves five NFL teams potentially homeless.
2020 NFL Homeless Teams
These are teams that could play a full season on the road. The Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, New York Jets and New York Giants will all need a new place to play.
Well good news, I’ve got a solution for this temporary problem.
Let’s first bring football back to St. Louis. While fans still have a sour taste in their mouth from the Rams leaving, they won’t be able to attend games so the NFL doesn’t have to risk have poor attendance as I don’t think fans will be in any stadiums this fall.
With the Edward Jones Dome, it’ll be easier to have two teams play there, as you don’t have to worry about the wear and tear a natural grass field would have so I’m looking at that for all of our NFL relocations.
Let’s put the Giants and Chargers in St. Louis for 2020. They’re still the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams but will play their home games in St. Louis.
The Rams were to open up their new stadium this fall but it’ll sit empty. Let’s get the Rams the NFL’s newest stadium and put them with the Raiders in Las Vegas.
The reigning NFC Champion San Francisco 49ers need a place to call home this fall. Let’s send them to Jerry World in Dallas. The 49ers are supposed to play there this season anyway so they get one road game at their new home stadium.
The Jets are the most challenging relocation team. The division is spread out with Buffalo, New England and Miami. I’m putting the Jets in Miami. Baltimore will be a good team to have on Monday night at least a couple times this season and with field turf, we can have back-to-back games.
2020 NFL relocation:
-Los Angeles Chargers in St. Louis
-Los Angeles Rams in Dallas
-New York Giants in St. Louis
-New York Jets in Baltimore
-San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas
There are a lot of unknowns ahead for all of us but hopefully football is back this fall wherever it may be played.