The Green Bay Packers are headed to London for the first time in franchise history, and the team is going through what almost every family goes through when they go on a long trip: Everyone doesn't seem to be agreeing on everything.
For the game in England, the Packers decided NOT to turn the trip into a vacation. Instead of spending the entire week in London -- like the Saints did before their Week 4 game against the Vikings -- the Packers will be landing in London on Friday morning and only spending two days there.
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is thrilled to be making his first NFL trip to London, but if it were up to him, he would have made one slight change to the team's travel plans. Instead of only going for the weekend, Rodgers would have preferred to spend the entire week in England.
"We're all excited," Rodgers said, via ESPN.com. "I think the reason I said I wanted to go over early was just to experience a little bit of that culture, to be able to get out and see some sights and interact with fans and ... shoot, go to a pub and have a Guinness or whatever the local brew is. That's what we all want to do, those of us that want to go over early."
Although Rodgers said that everyone is "excited" about the trip, that's not actually the case. Packers cornerback Rasul Douglas has already played in London once before -- with the Eagles in 2018 -- and he hated the trip.
"It f-----g sucked," Douglas said, via PackersNews.com.
So what does Douglas hate about it?
"You don't get to do nothing over there," Douglas said. "You just f-----g get on a plane, get over there and f-----g practice, and then you play a game. You get back on a plane and travel f-----g eight hours somewhere else."
Based on that complaint, it sounds like Douglas would be on board with Rodgers' idea of spending the entire week in London. When the Eagles traveled to England in 2018, they did the same thing the Packers are doing this year: They left on Thursday night and landed on Friday morning, which means the players had zero time to go out and sight-see.
One reason teams do that is because coaches hate being thrown out of their routine and it's almost impossible to keep your routine when you have to take an eight-hour flight and play a game that's six time zones away.
"Coaches are creatures of habit, even more than players," Rodgers pointed out Wednesday. "Anytime there's a minute adjustment to the schedule, it throws them all out of whack."
From a coaching standpoint. Matt LaFleur said it feels like the team is playing a Thursday game because of how condensed together all the preparation is in the lead up to the game.
"It feels like a Thursday night game for us as coaches just in terms of all the preparation you've got to do," LaFleur said. "But you just do it, so it is what it is."
If you're keeping score at home: Douglas hates playing in London, Rodgers would've preferred a longer trip and LaFleur compared it to playing a Thursday game, which definitely is not a compliment. Based on those comments, it doesn't sound like the Packers will be volunteering to play in London anytime soon. That being said, every team has to play at least one international game every eight years, so the Packers will be heading back to London at some point.
