Across The Pond

I’m not a fan of the NFL playing games “across the pond.” As soon as I say that or think it, I hear about UK fans of the Minnesota Vikings thrilled to finally see their team in person on Sunday. I know how they feel. I’m thrilled when the Vikings come to California. They did that twice last year and it was glorious. The overseas games are just so grueling and disruptive for an NFL team. The travel, the time change, the culture change, the routine change, everything. If playing in these games were easy there wouldn’t be so much debate as to how to deal with the disruption to a team’s weekly process. The Vikings play the New Orleans Saints in London on Sunday and each team is going about it differently. The Saints left on Monday. From Charlotte. They didn’t even return to New Orleans after playing the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. They’ve already been away from home for about a week. The Vikings arrive in London this morning. No one knows how best to handle these disruptive games and that’s the problem.

The London issue is such an issue that the Vikings made Tyler Williams, executive director of player health and performance, available to the media on Wednesday. He was peppered with questions. 

“The goal is to keep them on Central time as much as possible.” -Tyler Williams

The players sound like lab rats. Williams wants to minimize the toll, the disruption. He wanted this week to be as much like the other 16 game weeks as possible. Everything this week was routine until the end of yesterday’s practice. The team then boarded a plane bound for London at 6:30 pm CT. Nothing’s been routine since. Things won’t return to the routine until some time next week.

“Our goal is to hopefully get the players to sleep on the flight,” Williams said. “Get there, wake them up, move them, get the flight off us, go through what would be quote-unquote a normal Friday for these guys.”

The sleep part is key. They’ll do what they can to encourage sleeping on the plane. Cutting out screen time, limiting light exposure, and, if needed, take melatonin to encourage sleep. Not everyone can sleep on a plane. Only a few might get anything close to a restful sleep. 

Today is supposed to be a normal Friday for the Vikings. Just a normal Friday “across the pond.” 

“We’ll have an activation session with them right away, get some light exposure,” Williams said. “Maybe some caffeine, some tea, as they call it in London, some espresso.”

A normal Friday. 

Get plenty of sleep tonight. A normal Saturday. Walk-through. The normal Saturday evening. A normal Sunday. A normal game day. Beat the Saints. Come home. 

That normal game day is for a game that starts at 8:30 am CT. Normal.

Nothing is normal about any of this. 

Next week, the Green Bay Packers will experience a regular season overseas game for the first time. The league has been scheduling these games since 2007. It’s ridiculous that the coddled Packers have dodged this disruption for 15 years. They are the only team to be so “lucky.” This is the Vikings third trip across the pond. The Jacksonville Jaguars have played eight games in London. They are an outlier as their team’s owner wants his team in these games.  He wants the London market. The Las Vegas/Oakland Raiders and Miami Dolphins have played five games in London. The St. Louis Rams have played four games. I recently asked a Packers fan his thoughts on his team dodging these games for so long. He reacted as if it’s perfectly normal for his team to be given annual passes on the London games. He said that the Packers don’t want to lose a home game. No team does. He added that the Packers are such a draw on the road that opponents don’t want to lose a home date with them. No team wants to lose a home date with any team. Packers fans apparently believe that it’s perfectly normal for their team to be treated differently than the other 31 teams. No surprise there. 

I’m truly thrilled for the UK Vikings fans. If there’s a good thing about the team traveling to London, it’s them. Perhaps it’s the first time seeing the Vikings for some of the fans. I remember well the first time I attended a Vikings game. It was in Oakland in 1978. The Raiders won but it was one of the best days of my life. Maybe some little kid will be getting that experience on Sunday. Hopefully, with a better result. 

I’ll be watching on TV. At 6:30 in the morning.