The Baltimore Ravens flew to England on Monday morning to prepare for Sunday’s game against Tennessee.
It is by far the earliest any team has departed for an international contest so far this season.
Atlanta, Jacksonville and Buffalo all traveled on the Thursday prior to their respective games in London.
Coming off a 17-10 loss Sunday at rival Pittsburgh, the Ravens are hoping to avoid a repeat of their last trip to the United Kingdom in 2017.
That time, Baltimore flew out for its first-ever international game on Thursday night and then got thumped 44-7 by the Jaguars.
“It’s mostly driven by the fact that we didn’t do well, so we did the opposite,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said when asked about the travel strategy, per ESPN. “There’s no data — and we looked for it — to say when you should go out there and what’s the ideal thing. I’ll say this kind of in jest, what’s the science on that? As often is the case, they really don’t know. That’s just the way it is.”
The Titans (2-3) are scheduled to fly out after practice Thursday for Sunday’s game against the Ravens (3-2) at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
“Hopefully, by the time the game comes around … we’ve slept there six nights. You’d like to think we’ll be pretty well ready to go,” Harbaugh said. “I think that’s probably a big part of the decision to try and do it this way. Other teams go in there and say, ‘OK, we’re not going to mess with it. We’ll just stay on our own clock and play at 9:30 (British time) and we’ll get in and out.’ We don’t have to deal with it. It’s just kind of two schools of thought.”
–Field Level Media