The NFL announced that the teams of the NFC South will be carrying an additional overseas player on their practice squads during the upcoming season. This is part of the league’s flagship International Player Pathway program.
Now, the Falcons, Panthers, Saints, and Buccaneers will all be operating with an 11-man practice squad while the rest of the league has ten. However, they don’t necessarily have an advantage over other clubs because these additional overseas players cannot be activated during the season.
Here is a look at the players who will be joining each taxi squad:
- Falcons: Alex Gray, TE – Gray, a former rugby star, is the first English rugby union professional to quit the sport to pursue American football. The 26-year-old was named the England Sevens player of the year in 2015. He not to be confused with the undrafted Appalachian State safety of the same name who joined the Bucs’ 90-man roster.
- Panthers: Efe Obada, DE – Obada, who grew up in the Netherlands and England, was on the Cowboys’ practice squad in 2010. Prior to the 2016 season, he also had brief stints with the Chiefs and Falcons.
- Saints: Alex Jenkins, DE – Jenkins was born and raised in England but actually has a background in American football. Back home, he played for the Bath City Academy and for the Bristol Aztecs before earning a spot on the Great Britain youth team. He played his college ball in San Antonio, Texas at the University of the Incarnate Word. He had 3.5 sacks in his senior year.
- Buccaneers: Eric Nzeocha, LB – Nzeocha is now the second German-born player to join up with the Bucs in franchise history. German safety Claudius Osei spent the 2005 campaign on Tampa Bay’s taxi squad as part of a similar program. Nzeocha’s brother Mark is a linebacker for the Cowboys.
So the NFL can create extra space on the practice squad for foreigners but not Americans.
lol , are you trying to play games? it took 14 min to start
yeah! and what’s the deal with the show blackish? there’s no shows for white people!!!
rewatch friends, or how I met your mother. good shows
Why is this restricted to just the teams in the NFC South?
Good question. Division was chosen at random, per the league press release.
This is a very dumb idea. This is not baseball, basketball or hockey quit taking our games overseas and trying to sell it to their fans. Quit taking home games away from our teams fans and moving them over there they do not care about our style of football they only care about soccer.
All about the money they can make over there
What money? Whatever they sell is offset by the costs of getting everybody and all the equipment shipped over there. It’s not fair to the players to have the schedule and body clocks all frigged up and not fair to the fans who lose a home game. You want to give them a game? Give them the preseason games that STHs are forced to buy at full price. We gave them NFL Europe and they didn’t care, why give them the actual NFL?