In a season different from any other, Super Bowl week will not be like any other.
Super Bowl teams always arrive in the game city a week in advance, but this season’s participants cannot arrive in Tampa, Florida, before the Friday before Super Bowl LV, sources in ESPN told ESPN. the league.
If the Buffalo Bills and Green Bay Packers win their championship games Sunday morning, they are scheduled to make a temporary arrival in Tampa on Friday, Feb. 5, two days before the Super Bowl, according to sources.
If the Kansas City bosses advance to the Super Bowl, they don’t plan to arrive in Tampa until the day before the Super Bowl on Feb. 6, according to sources.
The fourth team to participate in Sunday’s conference championship games is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who spent the week practicing in front of Raymond James Stadium, in view of the Super Bowl LV banners now hanging on the stage.
All of these changes and adaptations are being made to keep teams on the COVID-19 prevention routines they’ve been following all season instead of having to do it in another city. Teams will now approach the Super Bowl as if it were a road trip during the season, rather than a trip to the biggest game of the season.
This also means that Super Bowl Media Day, the Monday night event that has become a staple of the Super Bowl, will be done virtually. Press conferences that have been held with players and coaches from each team will also be held virtually.
Many of the other events associated with Super Bowl week will also go virtual or be canceled, according to a source. Even the aftermath of the Super Bowl for winning and losing teams is not safe. Teams have the option to fly home immediately after the match.
If the Los Angeles Rams had beaten the Packers last weekend in the division round and advanced to play the front-row Bucks on the road, the NFL would have found itself in a situation it has never had in the its story: Sunday’s conference championship game would have been the first ever to be played on the same grass field in the Super Bowl that had already been set up before the big game.
Fortunately for the NFL, the Packers beat the Rams, avoiding a problem the NFL hadn’t had to deal with before, with a Super Bowl host city team advancing to the conference championship game.
The NFL set up the Super Bowl field weeks before the actual game and did so in Tampa. The turf on the Super Bowl field was grown months earlier, and is expected to be unveiled during the big game, but an NFC championship game in Tampa would have changed that.
This was not the only change at Raymond James Stadium and the surrounding area. The league also began transforming the Buccaneers’ parking lot and turning it into enclosed areas. Many of the Buccaneers ’banners surrounding Raymond James Stadium have also been in favor of more neutral NFL banners.