Eagles Players Feared Crime in Brazil. Is Philadelphia More Dangerous?

“I do not want to go to Brazil.”

To National Football League executives, who have worked for years to bring Friday night’s opening-weekend game to Brazil, the comment from Philadelphia Eagles player Darius Slay on his podcast last week had already gotten off to a bad start.

Then it got worse.

“They already told us not to leave the hotel,” he continued. “The crime rate is crazy. You know what I’m saying? I’m like, N.F.L., why do you all want to send us somewhere with a crime rate this high?”

He had told his family to stay home, he added, and hoped he would make it home safely. Because “boy, they’re talking about it is crazy down there.”

Slay was not the only Eagles player concerned. AJ Brown, a wide receiver, told reporters he planned to stay in his hotel room after the team had given players a long list of “don’t do’s” for Brazil. The list included “a lot, honestly,” he said. “Even as simple as just walking down the street with your phone in your hand.”

What the Eagles staff apparently did not mention: Philadelphia is far deadlier than São Paulo.

Last year, São Paulo registered 4.2 murders per 100,000 people, one of the lowest rates in Brazil. In Philadelphia, the murder rate was six times as high, at 26.1 per 100,000 people, even surpassing the murder rate of 23.1 across Brazil, according to the Homicide Monitor, a database of government statistics from the Igarapé Institute, a research institute that studies security.