The Carolina Panthers – along with 22,000 pounds of equipment – will board a charter flight at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport this evening and wake up in another country.
But their job will still remain the same.
The Panthers will become the 30th team (the Bucs are the 31st) to play a game in London with only the Green Bay Packers left out of the NFL’s international plans thus far, and while the time zone will be different – a 2:30p start in London will broadcast at 9:30a back home in Charlotte – the team’s staff will try their best to make the weekend as normal as possible for the players.
“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create as much familiarity with things as possible by trying to make Friday coming up as typical a Friday as possible,” said Ron Rivera, who added that the staff debated which day to leave and explored every option before deciding on Wednesday evening for a specific reason – although the coach had his tongue firmly in cheek while giving his reasoning. “One other team has gone on Wednesday afternoon and they won, so that’s what I’m hoping.”
“One of the things I told them was [to] embrace it, because they’ve got to travel, too. So nobody’s got an edge – it’s just how you handle it.”
“The biggest thing we talked about was trying to make sure Friday, Saturday and Sunday are as normal as possible for our guys, that’s our whole attitude towards it.”
What won’t be normal will be the fans’ reactions – although the Panthers expect many fans, including the Roaring Riot‘s group of almost 800, to be wearing black and blue at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and making the trip from all over the globe specifically to see the Panthers, most Europeans are happy to see any NFL game, even when they’re not a fan of that specific team.
Expect to see plenty of jerseys that are supporting teams that are playing stateside as opposed to the traditional, blue, black, white or red of Carolina and Tampa Bay – and expect to hear a lot of cheering.
“Fans are very receptive,” said Gerald McCoy, who traveled to London in 2011 with Tampa Bay but didn’t play due to injury. “The game is really fun. They cheer for everything – flags, it don’t matter – they just want to scream.”
“I had a blast, I was young – it was a long time ago.”
The Panthers equipment staff began the process of moving a football team overseas in April when they sent representatives to scout locations – from the hotel to the practice facility to the stadium itself – and even sent a boat over in August with items that weren’t safe to fly, like aerosol cans and batteries.
All to ensure that the players and staff have all of the creature comforts they need to ensure they’re ready for their business trip.
While Bruce Arians and the Bucs will travel Thursday evening after practice, Arians is trying desperately to avoid a repeat of the last time he coached in London – a 33-0 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in which the Cardinals had less than 200 total yards and possessed the ball for under 21 minutes of game time as Carson Palmer suffered an injury that would eventually end his career.
So his recollections of London aren’t exactly tours of Big Ben or Parliament.
“Not very good,” said Arians via conference call this week when asked about his memories of that week. “We got beat soundly and our QB broke his arm and we lost him for the season. It was not fond.”
Ron Rivera’s memories are a little different – he was part of the 1985 Super Bowl Bears team that played a preseason game at Wembley in 1986.
“We were like a bunch of rock stars,” reminisced Rivera. “I’m being serious – it was crazy. We did the Abbey Road, if you look that up, with Jim McMahon and a group of our offensive linemen, they mimicked the picture. Phil Collins came out and hung out with us one day for practice, they hung out with Walter Payton and a group of them went back to his studio and they had a little jam session.”
The three #Bears – Jim McMahon, Dan Hampton, and Kevin Butler, pose alongside the Abbey Road sign in London. pic.twitter.com/52n538Mkel
— Chicago History ™️ (@Chicago_History) March 22, 2016
Walter Payton and Phil Collins. *drops the mic* pic.twitter.com/ZKghLwZh8h
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) May 3, 2017
Ultimately, it’s a business trip – the Panthers hope to see some sights, eat some fish & chips and come back to Carolina for their bye week with a 4-2 record – the closer they can make this to a road game like the past three, all of which they’ve returned home from with victories, the better.
“When it comes down to it, it’s still another football game,” said Jarius Wright. “There’s still four quarters, it’s still played the same way, so we just have to try our best to get prepared and be ready to play.”
