How an NFL Team Travels During a Pandemic | Recharged Episode Two

how would you answer the question how to get a football team all the guys on staff a different city patience and a lot a lot of emails uh what makes the team successful everybody on the same page doing nothing but wanting to win everybody has to work together and it has to be a team effort basically if we don't hear anything by the end of the trip that means it was a success for us in the very beginning of this whole thing dean spanos said do whatever it takes to keep everybody safe we're family and that's our goal so that was like the simplest thing to say and the most important thing to say and yet doing that has been like the most intricate changing fluid fluid dynamic process [Music] ever the one thing that's always the same is we're here for football and we're here for long hours and it's a seven day a week thing and this year it's it's just so different you have this core group of 100 people who are coming from all different parts of the organization basically locked down in this pseudo bubble of a building and so the naturally complex situation of running a football team becomes even more convoluted every single piece of the day is completely different we're testing every day so everyone that comes into this building is testing every day and wearing a tracer which is proximity alert i just think it all starts with safety so that's where we have to put most of our time in and it's involved a lot of people the number one priority is safety the second priority is winning a championship um luckily those basically go hand in hand i mean they're both they're looking to work together this year john leatherwood coordinator of football logistics day to day it's my job to make sure that every single detail down to the minute is accounted for probably most important when looking for a hotel is taking a look at their meeting space at the tone please record your message hey iman it's john leatherwood from the chargers hey uh receive the floor diagrams you sent me thank you had a few questions on it so if you could give me a call back when you get a chance we need several rooms each position group and a shared room offense defense this season they take turns but we'll need to get at least 50 socially distanced chairs in there so by getting the dimensions of the rooms and what their layout is we can tell if a hotel is going to be a fit probably what i enjoy most is just the constant change i guess just like this week and and during throughout any season you're throwing curveballs left and right and it's a lot of a lot of you know planning ahead but also on your feet and problem solving and and just meeting the different challenges that arise more difficulties for the nfl season monday night's chargers saints game in new orleans could move to indianapolis because see who we do have on the line who do we have on from lax that is george from uh check out celiac hey how about new orleans hey this is harold anderson well we definitely have to be on our toes because things change all the time we just got a weather forecast a couple minutes ago actually um a friday night looks like it's going the worst of it [Music] uh we just got off a call from the league they're keeping us up on the weather as well and uh the possibility of the game moving if the storm discern decides not to go west and turns and comes back east and goes north then we got a problem in new orleans well now the league says well if that happens you need to fly to indianapolis and play even before kovid you know there could be some weather changes things of that nature and so that's what's fun about it in some ways and what's uh you know what's interesting in in some ways is that you know we get to make these adjustments and you get to be a part of the whole process uh if you guys have nothing else uh we'll just look forward to a a good trip for some monday night football uh for the chargers and the saints this weekend all right well thank everybody appreciate it and thank you have an amazing week all right you too stay safe stay safe new orleans all right bye-bye thank you well every day is different with covid everything you do normally you have to think of covet on top of that i'm chris smith i'm the equipment manager for the los angeles chargers in a normal world where you know the equipment room we always think of ourselves as kind of the heart of the whole thing because no one can function without football equipment and clothing to wear and gear to wear on the sidelines and uniforms especially from our standpoint we're dealing with so much laundry whether that's game uniforms practice uniforms coaches clothing it's constantly coming through our our room so we have to be very careful [Music] we have to make sure we're washing everything in the building that needs to be washed and we also sanitize the players equipment every time they use it every time they wear a helmet at practice it gets sanitized after practice disinfected every time they wear their shoulder pads it gets disinfected with all this hard work to get to this point we want to keep going we want to make it through the season maybe that's overkill but we feel like it needs to be done we need to just go above and beyond we've got a lot of pressure on us to make sure everything gets kept clean and nothing slips through the cracks so here they are as you can see this is this is the coach's trunk so in each each guy's slot you see you have his name you have the shoes you have their favorite candy so we know what candy they like so each guy has his own little thing candy and gum and here he has spear long sleeves for t-shirts when we show up to set up at the stadium it's it's this quick it's just everything is efficient and and done quickly because we we prepared during the week so our our job is all about preparation you know it's a huge thing so you know and as long as we handle our business on monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday sundays are easy last thing you want to do is be scrambling around the last second you've got to be able to adapt to anything you've got to have everything you need before the season starts so that once you get into the season you can go anywhere get fast you've got yourself covered from every temperature every climate you're gonna go into well there is a lot of moving parts and you don't do it by yourself james collins in the seating charts i just give that man the award of patience for trying to figure out how to seat people in a plane for hours at a time that's going to minimize the risk of spreading the virus we put that space in there so that with our contact tracing system if one person's sick we don't lose everybody from the same group you'd hate to have your center test positive but your backup centers out is too because they they sat next to each other on the plane or you know and they've got to do a 48-hour quarantine and then we sprayed out all the staff i don't have all the athletic trainers sitting near each other all the equipment guys in case we lose one or two we don't lose the whole staff and so by doing that we give ourselves the opportunity to have as many people available on game day as we possibly can just in case we get a get a positive test the plans change every single day so what we did on our last trip is not the same as what we're going to do on this trip because the protocol changed within the last week we're having less people go on the trip we're having more lockdown and everything has to be signed off on every single little thing from the seating chart on the plane to how we're getting on and off to what's the percentage of the tsa check it's amazing how we have to adapt every single little plan that we might not have thought twice about before and we're supposed to do more things so every single person has to play at least six more roles when they're going on the road so when tom and ed liken us to a military operation that runs on a schedule and runs on a routine every single one of those routines is rewritten every single week so we have 139 people how can we safely get them from the facility to the airport well we probably need 10 buses one two three seven eight nine ten as the one as they pull out and we spread about 14 people on each bus [Music] let's go i mean you watch a game all 11 guys on brothers offensive defense need to be on the same page so we all need to be on the same page so that coach knows when we arrive at the hotel everybody's got their room everybody knows where the meeting rooms are you know where the meal room is so everybody's on the same page and it's just uh kind of a wanted to be as smooth a machine as you can as you can have without the cooperation of everyone in that building it it doesn't happen feel like you've done your best and maybe nobody even knew or even noticed uh and and pull it off smooth is is a good feeling how we help this team most is taking care of business to the best of our ability so that they don't have to worry don't have to worry about any of the travel other than what's happening on game day

Channel: Los Angeles Chargers

Views: 100,295

Rating: 4.9286776 out of 5

Keywords: Los Angeles, Chargers, Football, NFL, LA, LA Chargers, Los Angeles Chargers, American Football

Id: V96t-EJNKhM

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020