After Hurricane Harvey his Houston, there was talk of the Texans and Jaguars flipping their home games in the twice-per-year series. After Hurricane Irma unexpectedly flooded Jacksonville, there’s talk of the Jaguars and Titans flipping their home games in the twice-per-year series.
Via the Associated Press, damage in and around EverBank Field may prevent Sunday’s Titans-Jaguars game from being played there.
The game could be played in Nashville, with the Jacksonville edition of the annual two-game series being played in Week 17. Another option would be to treat this as the bye for both teams and play the game in Week Eight, since both teams currently are due to be off then.
“The first step right now is to make sure our families are fine,” coach Doug Marrone said Monday, via the AP. “The second step is to make sure we can get back to Jacksonville. The next step is where our work is going to be done and then the next step, I would believe, is if the stadium is safe and things of that nature.”
The Jaguars stayed in Houston on Sunday and Monday night.
“The only thing I know is that people will be checking on the stadium, people will be checking on the fields,” Marrone said. “They’re going to get back to us sometime just to give us a report to where everything is at so we kind of get a little bit of a heads up or a feel of what we’re coming back to when we come back to Jacksonville.”
Given Jacksonville’s Week Three “home” game in London, moving the Week Two game would mean that the Jaguars won’t play in Jacksonville until October 15. Flipping the Titans-Jaguars series would give the Jaguars four home games in the final five weeks of the season.
For the Titans, playing at home this weekend would mean starting the year with three straight home games.
These issues remain secondary to the issues arising from damage wrought by the storm, but there is a competitive component and a business component that needs to be considered as the league tries to make the best possible decisions regarding how to proceed.