WARE, England — Bears wide receiver Keenan Allen, a low-key guy to start with and calloused by 12 years in the NFL, isn’t here for the pomp of an overseas trip to London. He’s here to play football.
“It’s a business trip,” the 32-year-old Allen said.
But for rookie wide receiver Rome Odunze, with all of five NFL games on his resume and just 22, it’s a little more than that.
Odunze knows what Job 1 is this week. “We’re here to win a football game. It’s important to keep the main thing the main thing,” he said. But he’s very much the wide-eyed tourist visiting a new land for the first time.
“It’s an awesome opportunity to embrace some of the culture and see the beautiful land out there,” Odunze said. “It’s a beautiful country.”
After arriving early Tuesday morning to prepare for Sunday’s game against the Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the players had a free day to catch up on sleep and then check out a world-class city, and Odunze was one of several who took full advantage of it.
“They do things a lot smaller here,” he said. “I know people say everything is big in America. But here there’s not a lot of big cars, the streets are two lanes and stuff like that. And they drive on the wrong side of the road.
“But I love their accent. I wanted to go to the city just to talk to people, because I love the way they talk and I like having conversations — trying to understand their different way of life.”
The London game is inherently tricky for NFL teams and coaches. The eight-hour trip to London presents an immediate jet-log problem. Visiting a city like London is a tremendous opportunity. But winning a game that counts in the standings is far and away the No. 1 objective. And many teams — like the Bears this week at Hanbury Manor an hour’s drive from London — practice at venues with facilities below their often state-of-the-art facilities at home.
Bears coach Matt Eberflus hoped to solve the jet-lag issue by having the team arrive in London on Tuesday morning and go through an adjusted practice routine.
“I think you try and make it as normal as you can in terms of sticking to your routine,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “And I think they’ve done a good job of that with the schedule, getting our [body] clocks right. But in reality, it’s not a normal week. There’s a little bit of distraction around it.
“But the schedule for us, Wednesday through Saturday, is pretty good. Everyone had [Tuesday] night to do their thing and have fun. And we did that. But there is a challenge to it. We don’t have our practice fields. It’s all different. And guys are still dealing with the jet-lag thing. I’m still pretty tired. I feel like I need one more night’s rest. But we have to lock in and do our jobs and be prepared as we can on Sunday.”
Wide receiver DJ Moore also had a positive review of the day in London.
“It was amazing,” Moore said. “Great times. Great vibes. Ended up doing a food tour. We had a guy who was pretty amazing.”
The highlight? “This place in Chinatown [Leong’s Legend], we had dumplings and spicy sauce,” Moore said. “It was good.”
On Wednesday it was back to work, with players like Kmet taking their cues from veteran Marcedes Lewis, who has played five London games, and spoke to the team with sage advice.
“His thing was, we’re gonna get there early, so enjoy the week.,” Kmet said. “Don’t shy away from having fun. And as we get close to the game, just be on it in terms of your sleep and rest … be professional and lock in to waht you have to do … and it should be smooth from there.”