The planning has been in the works for many months, and now the moment has arrived. The Eagles are days away from an international flight to São Paulo, Brazil and everything is in order. All the equipment has been sent – thousands of pounds of it. All of the passports are approved. The lodging is set, the transportation mapped out ... every bit of detail has been addressed.
This has been a full-team effort, says Dan Ryan, the Eagles' director of team travel and logistics. And it has been an exercise in how to tackle a huge project one step at a time, with the team's success as the objective at every turn.
"The first site visits were to get an idea of the infrastructure of the area and what we can do within that and in visits after that, we wanted to customize the experience as best we could to fit our needs," Ryan said. "We essentially made the schedule for that game – our hotel, the logistics of the traffic in Brazil – to have a plan going in. You look at buses and transportation options, and you look at hotels and everything we need."
The Eagles are leaving on Wednesday, flying for about 10 hours, arriving Wednesday night, having a team walkthrough at the stadium on Thursday, playing the game on Friday night, and then flying back to Philadelphia immediately after the game. The turnaround time is remarkable, and while the team is traveling outside of the United States, the time difference is only one hour.
Consistency is important. Understanding that São Paulo has the fourth-largest population of any city in the world will allow them to prepare for traffic conditions. They will allow for more travel time and the corporate relationship the team has with American Airlines has helped – American is providing the largest airplane in its fleet and that will allow as many players as possible to have access to pods where the players can stretch out and relax on the way to and from Brazil.
"We have the benefit of playing in Week 1 somewhere really, really far away," Ryan said. "So let's create our schedule that week and build in a travel day. The day that we travel essentially doesn't exist on our normal calendar. It's a travel day. And we will have space on the front end and on the back end, because our Week 2 game is a Monday night game at home (against Atlanta).
"The goal is to keep the guys comfortable but also to keep our body clocks on the same time, so we will fly out at 10 AM on Wednesday and get there around 10 PM (São Paulo is one hour ahead of Philadelphia). That will help on the back end when we return, too."
Ryan said the most challenging part of the logistics is to have everyone on the travel team ready with visas and passports and all the required paperwork. All of that is in place as the roster has changed. The Eagles have known since April – just before the NFL schedule came out in May – that they are playing in Brazil.
Ryan and his team have used their time wisely, so there is every bit of confidence that the travel part of it will be smooth. The first shipment of equipment – anything that is non-perishable (game tape, etc.) was sent via boat in early June. It arrived three weeks later. A cargo plane left a few days before the team departs Philadelphia.
The NFL has been very helpful in providing security, answering questions, and making it as easy as possible for both the Eagles and Packers to play the NFL's first game in South America.
"We've reached out to teams that have gone 'first,' like to Germany, to see what kind of hiccups and bumps they ran into along the way," Ryan said. "We aren't practicing down there, just a walkthrough and then the game, so that makes things a little simpler. In the back of our minds, we are treating it like a typical road game, just with the passport aspect.
"It is the first game in South America. There is a cultural difference and that's pretty cool. It's exciting and we are ready for a successful trip."
