NFL Plays Its Paris Game Without Delay or Incident
The NFL played its game Sunday as scheduled in Paris after a week of public conversation—including comments by President Donald Trump—about the recent civil unrest and violence in France.
The game was played at Stade de France without any incidents or delays as the Steelers beat the Saints, 16–10, in the sixth of the nine international games on the NFL’s slate for this season.
As with the week’s worth of public discussions about the field conditions that preceded the Cowboys-Ravens game in Brazil in Week 3, the buildup to the game produced far more drama about potential complications than game day itself.
It was about football—and about the NFL’s ever-burgeoning global ambitions—for the teams and fans Sunday in Paris. The game kicked off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time (2:30 p.m. Paris time) and was carried by the NFL Network, now owned by Disney’s ESPN. An announced crowd of 78,488 fans watched inside the stadium.
Aaron Rodgers and fellow Steelers quarterbacks Mason Rudolph, Drew Allar, and Will Howard, plus quarterbacks coach Tom Arth, arrived at the stadium dressed in suits and similar hats that the team said in a social media post were by “order of the Peaky Blinders.”
Front Office Sports’s Amanda Christovich attended the game and wrote beforehand on Twitter/X: “Almost kickoff here in Paris for Saints-Steelers. Beautiful weather for the NFL’s first game in France. NFL and team houses were closed yesterday [because] of protests, but those areas weren’t disturbed. Some shops were boarded up, some police. But city center felt mostly normal.”
Reporter Nick Underhill, who covers the Saints, wrote on social media: “Getting the stadium was no problem by taxi. No signs of anything going on. Just absurd traffic.”
The stadium video boards showed videos with explanations in French of football concepts and terms, such as “interception,” “forced fumble,” and “fumble recovery.”
Police made nearly 1,000 arrests as more than 400,000 people across France participated Saturday in the ongoing protests over school funding and the cost of living. A mass march began peacefully, according to the AP, but ended with protesters throwing fireworks and other objects at police, who reportedly responded with tear gas, sound grenades, and water cannons.
Trump told reporters Friday outside the White House that “you worry about it,” adding that he “would have said the NFL could have probably postponed that match.”
Even so, many media members and others who were in France wrote on social media Saturday that their activities were mostly unaffected by the protests. They said they felt safe and, in some cases, said the only sentiment to not play the game as scheduled Sunday came from people who were in the U.S. French police did ask Paris Saint-Germain to reschedule Sunday’s match against Lyon to Monday.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell traveled to France following an owners meeting in New York last week that concluded Wednesday. Goodell, along with owners Gayle Benson of the Saints and Art Rooney II of the Steelers, met Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
Goodell and the NFL maintained throughout the week that the league planned to play the game as scheduled. Goodell said he had spoken to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who confirmed that conversation and told OutKick and Fox News that there was “no indication the game will be impacted in any way.”
The league planned to have a “heightened” security presence around the game and related events, NFL executive Peter O’Reilly said Tuesday at the owners meeting.
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