ORLANDO, Fla. — As the NFL’s schedule continues to expand across time and place, Dallas Cowboys team owner Jerry Jones downplayed concerns about physical toll and competitive disadvantages.
The Cowboys and the Baltimore Ravens will travel to Rio de Janeiro in Week 3, for a Sept. 27 Sunday afternoon matchup. Neither team will receive additional rest on either end despite the travel demands of flying more than 10 hours each way.
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Instead, the Cowboys will host the Commanders a week earlier and visit the Houston Texans a week later. The Ravens will host the New Orleans Saints a week prior and stay home against the Tennessee Titans a week later.
The league’s two prior games in South America were staged Friday of Week 1, allowing teams no close prior competition and two extra days of rest on the back end.
Consider Jones in line with the changing policy.
“The wear and tear is a lot less than a night out on the town,” he told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday from the league’s May meeting. “Everybody ought to think about that. Stop, stop. It isn’t like they [would be] home in bed resting up.”
The Cowboys and Ravens had the opportunities for byes in Week 4 but declined them given how early that would be in an 18-week regular season.
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The league’s farthest 2026 game, in Melbourne, Australia, will be played the Thursday night of Week 1. Additional international games during the season will be staged across Europe and in Mexico City.
“Part of being a player, part of being that-age person, part of being all of that shape they’re in and what have you, is they’re able to have a little extracurricular in many ways,” Jones said. “It can be a lot more damaging just walking down the block.”
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Jones’ playful response to the league pushing literal and metaphorical boundaries with the 2026 schedule reflects knowledge that those boundaries only continue to grow and grow and grow.
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The league’s 16-game schedule has already become 17, with league interest in an 18th regular-season game as soon as 2027 if it can strike a deal with the union to expedite the renegotiation of the collective bargaining agreement.
The league’s international slate will reach nine games this season and, after a Tuesday vote by ownership, 10 in 2027. Again, the league hopes to expand further with eyes on 16 regular-season games played internationally and at least one standing international contest for every team. Right now, the collective bargaining agreement allows only 10 international games — including the Jacksonville Jaguars’ standing annual contest in England.
Expect a league game in Asia before long.
“Our goal is to go back to those markets that we’re establishing,” Peter O’Reilly, NFL executive vice president of club business and league events, said. “That said, there are parts of the world that we are looking at for future years. … Asia would be an example of that. Japan would be an example within Asia of a market that has complexity as Australia from a time zone perspective.
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“So it’s an important part of the world.”
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To help schedule international and domestic games in concert, the league passed a resolution Tuesday that would amend teams’ ability to block specific opponents from being placed in their international windows. For the 2026 season, teams ceding one of their “home” contests to an international neutral site had the ability to block up to two opponents from being relocated. As of Tuesday, they can no longer block any.
The international slate appears to be more competitive and feature more of the top teams this season than before. Two divisional games will take place overseas: the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams competing in Melbourne and the Houston Texans vs. Jacksonville Jaguars in London’s Wembley Stadium.
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O’Reilly downplayed the degree to which eliminating protected games weakens domestic scheduling.
“That really is less about international, though that’s a component of it, and more about optimizing the schedule,” O’Reilly said. “Making sure that the schedule makers have as much flexibility and optionality to deliver the best possible schedule in every window for our partners.”
O’Reilly did not discount the chance of a future Super Bowl abroad. But he said it is “not a frontburner topic for us.” The league has already selected host cities for the next four Super Bowls.
Cowboys continue to view George Pickens franchise tag as win-win
Cowboys Pro Bowl receiver George Pickens signed his franchise tag after the NFL Draft. Dallas expects Pickens to play out the 2026 season under the tag, with a chance to hit the market next spring. Teams have incentive to tag players rather than award them long-term contracts if they want more long-term flexibility. Even so, the Cowboys tagging Pickens makes arguably more sense than the average tag recipient: His talent has proven sufficiently high end to warrant the $27.3 million guaranteed he’ll receive this year. And yet, his inconsistent tenure in Pittsburgh raised questions about his value.
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Posting a career-best 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns last season raised Pickens’ value.
“This is great from our view,” Jones told Yahoo Sports. “For him as well, it lets him really extend what he’s got going right now in light of the fact that … when we got him, we got him for no other reason than because there was a long-term question. Through next year and this year, he’ll answer all those questions.”
In Year 2 with the Cowboys and quarterback Dak Prescott, Dallas expects Pickens to elevate his game still further.
“We will expect more earlier,” Jones said. “He will expect more. That he not only build on where he got to last year, the preparation will be out there happening as a major part in any series or any game. So I think from the get-go, he will have more to give in the plans of what we’re doing early and late in the season.”
