After opening the season with two straight home games, the Oakland Raiders are about to embark on what might be the most brutal road trip in NFL history, and Jon Gruden definitely isn't happy about it.
During an interview this week, Gruden said the Raiders road trip is something that should have never happened to an NFL team.
"It's uncommon, maybe unprecedented, maybe unrealistic that this should ever happen in pro football," Gruden said, via NBC Sports Bay Area. "I'm not excited about it, but we'll adapt and do it the best we can."
So what makes this particular road trip so bad?
For one, the Raiders are being sent on the road for 48 straight days. Although the team did play at home on Sunday against the Chiefs, they won't return to Oakland for another game until Nov. 3. During their stretch away from home, the Raiders will play road games against the Vikings (Week 3) and Colts (Week 4), before heading to London for a "home" game against the Bears in Week 5.
Although the Raiders will be getting a bye in Week 6 after their trip to London, they'll hitting the road again after that with games in Green Bay (Week 7) and Houston (Week 8), which is how you end up with a 48-day road trip.
It will likely be an especially rough trip for Gruden, who hates flying and admitted last year that he once dealt with vertigo during an international trip to visit his son.
"We are still trying to understand how that happened, but we are going to have to deal with it," Gruden said. "We just have to showcase our mental toughness and deal with it."
The Buccaneers were also given a 48-day road trip on their schedule, which led to Bruce Arians ripping the NFL back in April. There are only three teams in the NFL this year that will go an entire calendar month without playing a home game. Besides the Bucs and Raiders, who won't play at home in October, there's also the Jaguars, who won't play a home game in November.
As for the Raiders, quarterback Derek Carr isn't necessarily complaining about his team's brutal travel schedule, but he would like to see the league maybe hook the Raiders up next time to even things out.
"We definitely miss the Black Hole playing at home, but you learn things over the years that help you on a travel schedule like the one we have," Carr said. "I think almost every year I've been here we almost lead the league in travel miles. Shout out NFL if you guys want to hook us up next time."
During the six-week stretch away from Oakland, the Raiders will travel an estimated 21,347 miles. which is more than 22 NFL teams will travel for the entire season. It's such an ugly situation that the NFL schedule-maker basically admitted that he messed up, but despite the apology, it doesn't sound like Gruden is going to be willing to forgive and forget.
