Philly Leader

The planning has been in the works for many months, and now the moment has arrived. The Eagles are days away from an international flight to São Paulo, Brazil, and everything is in order. All the equipment has been sent – thousands of pounds of it. All of the passports are approved. The lodging is set, the transportation mapped out ... every bit of detail has been addressed.

This has been a full-team effort, says Dan Ryan, the Eagles' director of team travel and logistics. And it has been an exercise in how to tackle a huge project one step at a time, with the team's success as the objective at every turn.

"The first site visits were to get an idea of the infrastructure of the area and what we can do within that and in visits after that, we wanted to customize the experience as best we could to fit our needs," Ryan said. "We essentially made the schedule for that game – our hotel, the logistics of the traffic in Brazil – to have a plan going in. You look at buses and transportation options, and you look at hotels and everything we need."

The Eagles are leaving on Wednesday, flying for about 10 hours, arriving Wednesday night, having a team walkthrough at the stadium on Thursday, playing the game on Friday night, and then flying back to Philadelphia immediately after the game. The turnaround time is remarkable, and while the team is traveling outside of the United States, the time difference is only one hour.

Consistency is important. Understanding that São Paulo has the fourth-largest population of any city in the world will allow them to prepare for traffic conditions. They will allow for more travel time and their corporate relationship with American Airlines has helped – American is providing its largest airplane which will allow as many players as possible access to pods where they can stretch out and relax on their way to and from Brazil.

"We have the benefit of playing in Week 1 somewhere really far away," Ryan said. "So let's create our schedule that week and build in a travel day. The day that we travel essentially doesn't exist on our normal calendar. It's a travel day. And we will have space on the front end and on the back end because our Week 2 game is a Monday night game at home (against Atlanta).

"The goal is to keep the guys comfortable but also to keep our body clocks on the same time so we will fly out at 10 AM on Wednesday and get there around 10 PM (São Paulo is one hour ahead of Philadelphia). That will help on the back end when we return too."

Ryan said that getting everyone on board with visas, passports, and all required paperwork was challenging given roster changes since April when they learned about playing in Brazil just before May's NFL schedule release.

Ryan's team used their time wisely ensuring confidence that travel will be smooth. The first shipment of non-perishable equipment left via boat early June arriving three weeks later; another cargo plane departed days before their flight from Philadelphia.

The NFL provided significant support by offering security assistance answering questions making it easier for both Eagles Packers preparing for NFL's first South American game.

"We've reached out teams gone 'first,' like Germany seeing hiccups bumps encountered," Ryan noted adding simplicity by only conducting walkthroughs not practices treating it like typical road games despite passport requirements cultural differences exciting ready successful trip."