In a season like no other, Super Bowl week isn’t going to be like any other.
Super Bowl teams always arrive in the city of the game a week in advance, but this season’s contestants are not allowed to arrive in Tampa, Florida, earlier than the Friday before Super Bowl LV, league sources told ESPN.
If the Buffalo Bills and Green Bay Packers win their championship games on Sunday, sources say they have tentative plans to arrive in Tampa on Friday, February 5, two days before the Super Bowl.
If the Kansas City Chiefs advance to the Super Bowl, sources say they won’t be arriving in Tampa until the day before the Super Bowl on Feb. 6.
The fourth team involved in Sunday’s championship games are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who trained all week across from Raymond James Stadium, in view of the Super Bowl LV banners now hanging on the stadium.
All these changes and tweaks are made to keep the teams in the COVID-19 prevention routines for the entire season, rather than having to do it in a different city. Teams are now approaching the Super Bowl like any other 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 Super Bowl staple, will take place virtually. News conferences held with players and coaches from each team will also take place virtually.
Many of the other events related to Super Bowl week will also go virtual or be canceled, a source said. Even the post-Super Bowl parties for the winning and losing teams aren’t certain. Teams have the option to fly home immediately after the game.
Had the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Packers in the division round last weekend and moved on to play the higher-ranked Bucs on the road, the NFL would have experienced a situation it never had in its history: Sunday’s championship game would have been first. to ever be played on the same Super Bowl grass pitch that was already installed prior to the big game.
Fortunately for the NFL, the Packers beat the Rams, averting a problem the NFL hadn’t faced before – with a Super Bowl host city team running up to the conference championship.
The NFL will install the Super Bowl field weeks before the actual game itself, and did so in Tampa. The grass for the Super Bowl field is being grown months in advance, scheduled to be revealed during the big game, but an NFC Championship Game in Tampa would have changed that.
That wasn’t the only change in and around Raymond James Stadium. The competition also began transforming the Buccaneers’ parking lot and turning it into gated areas. Many of the Buccaneers banners that surround Raymond James Stadium are in favor of more neutral NFL banners as well.