NFL football players like their routines. They stick to a strict schedule during the season. So flying nearly 10 hours for a Friday night game to kick off the season on another continent is quite a wrench to throw into the whole operation.
That’s why the Eagles want to keep their players focused.
This certainly isn’t a vacation.
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And even if the trip feels like a nuisance to some players, there are no excuses.
“We’re going there to play and win a football game,” head coach Nick Sirianni said on Sunday about the Eagles’ season opener against the Packers at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil, on Friday night.
“That’s our goal. That’s our only goal as we go down there. It’s just getting everybody in the right mindset of what you need to be when you go down there. You can control the things that you can control. We’re going to Brazil to play. That’s what it is and we’re excited about it. “
Sirianni on Sunday — as the Eagles began their normal game week prep — also pointed out some of the positives about playing in Brazil. They’ll get a mini bye week coming off the Week 1 game. They’ll get to experience playing in a neutral site. And they’re helping introduce a new sport to a foreign audience.
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Of course, it won’t be easy to prepare for this game in Brazil. But it is a level playing field with the Packers, who are also dealing with the same travel schedule and hurdles along their way.
Sirianni on Sunday compared it to a rain game — whichever team handles the ran better has the advantage.
“That’s the same thing when you’re going to a neutral site, whether it’s London, whether it’s wherever it is,” Sirianni said. That will be good for us. It’s going to be good for us just to go play in this neutral site and handle the different things that pop up in the NFL. You play on a short week, ‘Oh this game got changed to that game.’ These are things that we can’t control. What we can control is our effort, what we can control is our attitude, what we can control is our core values and that’s what we’re going to focus on this week.”
Last week, the Eagles already had a team meeting with their players about traveling to Brazil for this game. As A.J. Brown revealed, it was a meeting of mostly “don’t do’s” from the organization.
When asked about what the players can’t do, Brown said a lot and gave the example of walking down the street with his phone out.
Brown said he is probably just going to stay in his hotel room in São Paulo and a lot of other players will likely follow suit.
But first they have to get there.
At it’s a trip that will take around 9 1/2 hours in a charter plane from Philadelphia to São Paulo.
“You always want to handle things like,” Sirianni said. “Again, we have great doctors and training staff and strength staff and we already talked about our plan of what the flight’s going to look like, what the post-flight is going to look like, IVs and different things like that because a flight like that can dehydrate you. But that’s our job.
“Again, the flight is what it is. The 9-hour flight is what it is or whatever that’s going to be. Now, control what you can control. Are your fluids getting in your body, the IVs, the stretching? All the things that we’re going to do to make sure that we’re ready to go physically for this game.”
The good news for the Eagles? It takes even longer to get to São Paulo from Green Bay.
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