The NFL gets it right moving the Rams and Chiefs back to LA

The National Football League got it right on Wednesday when they moved the Monday night game featuring the Los Angeles Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs back to LA after terrible field conditions in Mexico City left them no choice.

Credit the National Football League for getting it right when they absolutely needed to. Instead of capitulating to whatever pressures might have been in keeping a regular season game in Mexico City, the move to preserve the integrity of the game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs was the right one.

The few positives that would have come from moving heaven and earth to keep the Monday Night game at Azteca Stadium would have been minimal at best if either team would have had an injury to any one on their respective rosters. It would have also meant the League would have been seen putting their global aspirations above the health and welfare of the their players. The added equation that it would have been a game featuring two of their best teams, and one where future stars were on a bad field made for the needed decision.

One other thing to consider is the optics of this mess averted. The NFL has never shied away from bad optics, as they often relish them by willfully falling into them. From domestic violence to the National Anthem debacle, the keystone cops that make up the offices of Roger Goodell in Manhattan typically get this stuff wrong.

Today they didn’t. They avoided the spectacle of what could have gone wrong if they had not erred on the side of caution and logic.

Why the league was not aware of, or had not made considerations prior to Week 11 is another story. The fact that they were needing to make such a decision on the Wednesday prior to a Monday Night game speaks to the commissioner maybe hoping it would all work out at the end of the day.

Thankfully for the Rams and the Chiefs, Goodell can take a victory lap and avoid tripping over his own sense of vanity.