What do you think of when asked about Brazil?
I picture the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio de Janeiro and the Museum of Tomorrow. I can also bring to mind Ipanema Beach where it is rumored a beautiful girl took a walk every day that captured the eye of a recording artist.
Well, erase all those thoughts for now, because on Friday night the Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo will be the site of the first National Football League game played on Brazilian soil. The contest finds two teams with legitimate Super Bowl hopes this season, the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers, battling each other.
I don’t know why the NFL is so bent on the International Games. Last year, when a friend was on his way to Germany for an NFL game in a foreign country, I got into a conversation with an NFL executive and posed the same doubts about these games played in faraway lands. He took offense to my “small minded” assessment of the project with the words, “It is a whole new vast world market to open up.”
Really?
And who needs it?
If you’re already eating an ice cream cone, is there value in loading your other hand with a second? Isn’t one robust market like the United States enough?
Apparently not for the powers to be and the decision makers in the NFL. So, the Eagles and Packers pack their gear and travel 4,795 miles to kick off their 2024 campaigns.
These two teams finished the 2023 season headed in opposite directions. The Eagles were once in the running for an opening week playoff bye, but after losing five of their final six games got all byes and no playoff dates. The Packers caught fire down the stretch of last season, won six of their final eight regular season games and blew out the Dallas Cowboys in their opening postseason contest.
In the process, Aaron Rodgers’ replacement in Green Bay, Jordan Love, looked like a franchise winning QB while Rodgers sat on the sidelines in New York after being injured on his first series of downs with his new team, the Jets.
How they finished, how Love seemed to find his stride as a winning quarterback, bodes very well for the Packers entering this season. Some think it is enough for Green Bay to advance all the way to Super Bowl LIX and a possible matchup against the team they squared off against in Super Bowl I, the Kansas City Chiefs.
Then we have the Eagles.
After last season's collapse the team brought in Kellen Moore to run the offense, and he has totally revamped what had the Eagles in the Super Bowl two years ago. Some say Eagles Quarterback Jalen Hurts loves the new design, other reports have questioned whether head coach Nick Sirianni is totally aligned with the direction his team is now taking.
If the Eagles fail early, after last year’s fade to black to complete the season out of the playoffs, Sirianni could be one of the first coaches to absorb being fired. He certainly starts the season on one of the coaching hot seats.
So, take the Packers because of their direction, or lean the favored Eagles way given they have so much to atone for after last season’s disappointing finish?
Those are two choices, then add to the mix that the game is played in a stadium neither of these teams has ever been in before, in front of a crowd with little football knowledge in a time zone seven hours ahead of their home sites. Put all that together, and you get more moving pieces than a 1000 piece puzzle being knocked off a card table by the family dog.
Here is the thing, if this game was played on either of these teams' home fields, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia or Lambeau Field in Green Bay, I’d be on the Packers.
But it’s not, so neither am I.