The Green Bay Packers are set to take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Brazil Friday night to open the regular season. This represents the first time that a regular-season NFL game has taken place in South America.
It has also not come without a ton of drama in the lead up to the game in Sao Paulo. Several players have voiced concern over safety within the confines of the crime-riddled country.
Eagles cornerback Darius Slay made waves recently indicating that he doesn’t want to play in Brazil.
“I do not want to go to Brazil. You want to know why? I’m going to tell you why,” Slay said.
“They already told us not to leave the hotel. They told us we can’t do too much going on, because the crime rate is crazy. I’m like ‘NFL, why would you want to send us somewhere with a crime rate this high?”
Packers running back Josh Jacobs expressed similar concerns last month. A lot of this has to due with warning and procedures the NFL has offered up to players of both teams. In fact, multiple players have indicated that they’ll just stay in their hotel rooms and wait the trip out before returning home.
We now have a logistical nightmare on our hands heading into this one. At least, the Packers do.
Related: Brazil tightens security amid concerns from Philadelphia Eagles, Green Bay Packers players
Green Bay Packers facing two-hour game-day commute to Corinthians Stadium
Green Bay is technically listed as the road team for this international game. As such, the NFL opted to give Philadelphia accommodations at a hotel closer to the venue of Monday night’s game in Sao Paulo.
According to Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports, this means that the Packers are facing a game-day commute of between 1.5 and 2 hours. We’re not joking.
As if Packers players needed a reason to be more upset over having to play in Brazil to open their season. They were already told not to sleep during what was a nine-hour flight from Wisconsin to the South American country.
Let’s just hope everything moves smoothly between now and the time that the two teams head home. For now, it’s not looking great.
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