On Tuesday afternoon the NFL announced that it will not play any international games this season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NFL originally planned to have four London games and one Mexico City matchup in 2020. And while the opponents in each of the four London games were known, the NFL had not yet released Arizona's scheduled opponent in Mexico.
As a result, the scheduled home team will now host each of these games in its home stadium.
This not only has an effect on the schedule, but alters projections for the 2020 NFL season as eliminating neutral-field games benefits the home team while hurting the visitor.
With this in mind, we ran 10,000 simulations of the upcoming NFL season to determine how win probabilities and projected point spreads changed for each of these matchups.
Denver Broncos at Atlanta Falcons
Win probability (London): Falcons 54.0%
Win probability (Atlanta): Falcons 61.4%
Projected spread (London): Falcons -1.7
Projected spread (Atlanta): Falcons -3.2
Indianapolis Colts at Jacksonville Jaguars
Win probability (London): Colts 69.1%
Win probability (Jacksonville): Colts 64.2%
Projected spread (London): Colts -5.7
Projected spread (Jacksonville): Colts -3.7
Detroit Lions at Jacksonville Jaguars
Win probability (London): Lions 60.5%
Win probability (Jacksonville): Lions 53.1%
Projected spread (London): Lions -3.1
Projected spread (Jacksonville): Lions -1.2
New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins
Win probability (London): Patriots 53.7%
Win probability (Miami): Dolphins 51.8%
Projected spread (London): Patriots -1.5
Projected spread (Miami): Dolphins -0.6
