With the release of the NFL schedule last week came the yearly counting of mileage. And for the first time in four years, the Raiders won’t lead the league in that category. The primary reason is because they have no international home game. The secondary reason is that they will call Las Vegas home, saving them an average of 689 miles round trip on games in which they travel east.
Currently that puts them at the seventh-most travel miles IF they simply fly out and back for each game. But that may not be what they end up doing.
The Raiders were one of eight teams to have requested to pair up long road games this season according to NBC’s Peter King and the NFL granted their request.
The games they had paired were their trips to Atlanta and New York in Weeks 12 and 13.
The purpose of connecting these East Coast games is to give the team the option of staying through the week should they choose to do so. It allows them to cut out two long flights and acclimate to back-to-back 10am Pacific time starts. They tie a franchise record for most 10am Pacific start time games this season, so that would be helpful.
You may recall the Raiders did this in 2016 under Jack Del Rio when they had consecutive games in Florida, first in Jacksonville and then in Tampa. They stayed over in Orlando and practiced through the week there. They won both games, by the way.
Staying over for that week would hack approximately 3228 miles off their season travel total, bringing it down to 20,968 miles traveled.
Leave a Reply