As Bucs prepare to play in Germany, biggest challenges could come before kickoff

TAMPA — The day before his team was slated to board a flight for another continent, Bucs coach Todd Bowles deflected questions about the season’s greatest logistical challenge for his team with a nothing-to-see-here narrative.

When asked if it’s more challenging to prepare for a game in which jet lag could surface as a major subplot, Bowles’ response bordered on the dismissive.

“It’s not. It’s football,” said Bowles, whose team plays the Seahawks in Munich, Germany, on Sunday.

“The time change, the (sleep) glasses and the sleep time, it would be no different than if we had to fly to Seattle. That’s a long flight, too. It would be maybe another hour more, at tops.”

Not quite.

This business trip stretches across an ocean and not a country. The time difference between Tampa and Seattle is three hours, not the six between Tampa and Munich. The game-day weather forecast for Munich called for temperatures in the low to mid-40s for the game.

Bottom line, this trek to Germany — Tampa Bay’s first game in Europe since a 2019 loss to Carolina in London — could be jarring to the body and brain, despite the efforts of Bowles and Seahawks counterpart Pete Carroll to minimize the effects.

“The challenge is one that both teams have,” said Carroll, whose team arrived in Germany before Tampa Bay and held a practice in Munich on Thursday.

“It’s going into the newness and adapting on the road and all that, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I really don’t. … We have such a great group around us and people that can function so well together, and they’re so well-organized that it’s not going to be a big deal. We’re just going to go play another away game.”

Still, the Bucs rolled out Dave Hamilton, their director of performance science, on Wednesday to discuss measures being employed to help the players mitigate a 10-hour flight and the time difference.

“You have what’s called a diurnal rhythm, which is your body’s natural hormones throughout the day,” Hamilton told reporters.

“We know that the body, from a speed-power-activity standpoint, typically performs best kind of early to midafternoon. So you want to try and get the guys to feel like that’s the time they’re playing at; it’s going to be most beneficial for their performance.”

Altering those biological clocks for a game with critical long-term implications could require coaxing and cutting-edge gadgetry.

The Bucs were scheduled to fly out of Tampa around 5 p.m. Thursday, putting their arrival time in Munich today at roughly 3 a.m. EST, 9 a.m. in Germany. A practice was scheduled for 3:25 p.m. today Munich time, or after 9 a.m. in Tampa.

To help the players adjust to embarking on their workday at what normally would be a wee hour for them, Hamilton encouraged them to wake up a half-hour earlier each day this week. To help them sleep on the plane, players and staffers were provided sleep glasses that reduce exposure to blue light.

“The logic being that the blue light that you have coming from your TV, your phones, your laptops will reduce melatonin, which is a hormone that your body releases on an evening, which then drives your need to sleep,” Hamilton said. “So by wearing these glasses, what it’s going to do is, it’s going to stop the ability for blue light to get into the eyes.”

Additionally, players were urged to limit any nap upon arrival to no more than 30 minutes, so the likelihood of feeling tired would be maximized when Friday night in Germany arrives.

All in an effort to bring a midafternoon feel to Sunday afternoon in Munich.

Even as the game’s domestic audience has breakfast with the Bucs.

“Definitely just hydrate, get some good sleep on the plane, and then hopefully get acclimated as much as possible,” veteran left tackle Donovan Smith said.

“They do a good job here with our sports science and getting us information on things that we need to do to make sure we get acclimated. So if I can remember, just make sure to get some good sleep and hydrate, so that way you’re nice and rejuvenated when you land and touch down over there.”

Contact Joey Knight at jknight@tampabay.com. Follow @TBTimes_Bulls.

• • •

Sign up for the Bucs RedZone newsletter to get updates and analysis on the latest team and NFL news from Bucs beat writer Joey Knight.

Never miss out on the latest with the Bucs, Rays, Lightning, Florida college sports and more. Follow our Tampa Bay Times sports team on Twitter and Facebook.