Billy Buffalo
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- Mar 16, 2019
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Super Bowl week will be very different this year, for many reasons. One reason relates to the arrival of the Super Bowl teams in Tampa.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the Super Bowl teams will remain in their normal environments for Super Bowl week, traveling to Tampa for the game in the same way the teams would travel for a normal road game in Tampa. Ordinarily, teams travel a week before, given the various media obligations surrounding the game.
The reason for the deviation is simple. It’s deemed safer for players to remain in their normal, usual practice facilities and living arrangements in advance of the championship game, especially since family members are now included within the broader testing protocol (if they choose to be). This eliminates the risk of taking the team to a hotel in the Tampa area, and of packing up the operation and transporting it back and forth to a local practice facility multiple times throughout the week.
By now, all teams have worked out a routine that, with a small handful of exceptions, has been effective. The league is far more comfortable trusting those routines that relocating franchises to Florida for a full week.
This would give the Buccaneers an even greater advantage if they end up winning the NFC Championship. They’d be in their own facility all week and in their own homes and beds all week, and they wouldn’t have to travel anywhere for the game.
First, of course, they have to earn a spot in the game.