For a second straight season, the Los Angeles Rams are London bound. On Sunday, the Rams will "host" the Arizona Cardinals in London, and it won't be their final time playing a "home" game abroad. They're expected to play in an international game every season until 2020, when their new stadium is completed.
So, it's bad news then that Rams star running back Todd Gurley is not exactly pleased with the NFL's International Series. On Thursday, Gurley told the NFL to "stop this, all this stuff."
"Terrible," Gurley said after being asked about getting into a routine before London, per ESPN. "They need to stop this, all this stuff. This London, this Mexico City stuff, it needs to stop."
The Rams spent nearly a week in Jacksonville before flying to London on Thursday. According to ESPN, no team will travel more regular-season miles than the Rams from the beginning of last season to the end of this season.
For what it's worth, it sounds like Gurley enjoys the experience in London -- just minus the traveling aspect.
"It's cool playing over there, don't get me wrong," Gurley said. "Just more of the long week, messes up a bunch of people's schedules. I'm pretty sure y'all [the media] wanna be in y'all bed right now, too. But naw, it's all good. It'll be love. The fans over there are great."
Gurley better get used to it, because the NFL is unlikely to pull the plug on its international series. In addition to playing multiple games in London, the NFL is also committed to holding games in Mexico. There are also plans to add more London games to the schedule.
Mark Waller, the executive vice president of NFL International and the league's full-time point person in London, told CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora in September that the London slate could expand to eight regular-season games and that one team could play there more than once in the same season.
"I'd like to do both of those," Waller said. "I don't think you have to go four games, five games, six games, seven games, eight games. I think we've shown by the strength of the foundation that the demand is there, and I definitely think you could play across a full season [eight regular-season "home" games] and slate the games and I definitely agree with you, you'd want to see a team coming over and playing two or even three games, and then going back to the States and seeing how that works.
"Because ultimately we believe if you ever put a team here the schedule would have to work on a flighting of two or three games in the UK, followed by two or three games in the States. I don't think you could expect a team to travel backwards and forwards every week. So we'd like to see what it's like to play here back-to-back weekends, and I'm sure we'll get to that in the next couple of years."
Gurley and the Rams can take solace in the fact that they'll get a bye week after returning from London on Sunday. Also, they might see a better "home" crowd in London than they do in L.A. Actually, that second one might not be a good thing.
