The Panthers held their second practice session in London Friday morning – the one session that Ron Rivera has been trying to keep the closest to a normal practice for the entirety of the week to preserve the three-day weekend of a usual NFL schedule – on the misty fields of the Harrow School.
The weekend mirrors their schedules at home.
Practice situational football on Friday – as if the weather wanted to keep with Panthers tradition and highlight the reason for the bubble being built in Charlotte, it rained during the session – and play football on Sunday afternoon with the players having a day mostly to themselves, excluding a walk-through at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, on Saturday.
And during their off time, the players are encouraged to explore the city, whether it’s Greg Van Roten heading to London Bridge or getting some tea at Buckingham Palace – “if the Queen’s home”, Gerald McCoy heading to Paris for a few hours or simply a group of players heading to Nando’s for dinner on Efe Obada’s recommendation.
“I’ve tried to get them to understand that both teams have to come over here,” said Rivera Friday morning, adding that the players were ‘chipper’ during their morning meetings and adjusting to the jetlag. “So there’s no reason not to feel like you have a great experience in front of you. I told them to focus and I used a friend of mine’s saying: ‘Be where your feet are.'”
“Wherever you are, focus in on wherever you are 100%. When you’re on the practice fields, when you’re in the meeting room, when you’re on the game field, be where you are. When you’re not, [when you’re with] your family, your friends and around town, enjoy that. It’s a great experience and for some of these guys, it might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s been terrific, it really has.”
And while Christian McCaffrey has been the most recognized Panthers player – ‘when people find out he’s the guy that flipped, they flip about it,’ joked Rivera – with Cam Newton not making the trip, Luke Kuechly and Efe Obada have gotten the most recognition during their brief time in London, although the sheer size of the players have caused some London-ers to turn their heads when a group of linemen walk by.
The Panthers at a Play 60 event in London Thursday afternoon.
As the brand of the Carolina Panthers continues to get more worldwide recognition, the players have said that seeing Panthers fans across the pond – and growing more and more wherever the team plane lands, thanks to the Roaring Riot – is something that feels surreal.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Christian McCaffrey. “It’s definitely a cool experience, getting to see Panthers gear overseas has been a lot of fun.”
And winning helps that – it’s not just avoiding a ten-hour plane ride back to the States and a week off after a loss – when you’re a winning team, fans everywhere come tend to come along for the ride, especially overseas fans who may be still trying to figure out what team they’ll root for on Sundays.
“Winning is a huge part of it,” said Rivera. “When you have success, it kind of filters down to everybody. It works hand in hand too. Sometimes when you’re down, that part of it still has to bring fans in. That’s what [being featured on ‘All or Nothing’] did for us. I think it also brought some people saying, ‘OK, I get it. They went through some real hard times and their quarterback got hurt and they tried to fight through it.’”
“But winning, though, is the key. Everything you do has to be geared toward one goal. You have to have the same vision, and that is to win the Super Bowl. If you do that, and you put yourself in that position and you roll through it, you’re gonna have success on and off the field.”
Some students took advantage of those other guys using their fields and got Luke Kuechly’s autograph.
I would refer to their attitude as positively chuffed. pic.twitter.com/OiXwDJksI4
— Josh Klein (@joshkleinrules) October 11, 2019
The Panthers may make some fans this week in London, where the crowd at the stadium will have plenty of Panthers fans – but also just fans of the NFL who tend to cheer for anything and everything that happens on the field.
That’s why the Panthers piped noise into their practice on Friday afternoon, both while they were on offense and on defense, because they want to be prepared for everything.
“We’re just not sure what it’s going to be like,” said Van Roten. “When you’re playing at home in the United States, you know it’s going to be quiet on offense and when you have an away game, it’s going to be loud when you’re on offense. Here, we heard they’re loud situationally – so we’re just getting ready for that, just in case.”
