The Kansas City Chiefs will hit the road for the first time during the 2020 season in Week 2. They’ll be heading to the brand new SoFi Stadium, which is home to both the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams.
Also new to the Chiefs is traveling to play an away game during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team has new protocols and rules by which they’ll abide, altering what is their normal travel schedule. Andy Reid spoke on some of the changes as they relate to travel during his Monday press conference.
“Yeah, so you can’t leave the hotel,” Reid told reporters. “So, we’ll leave a little bit later, get to the hotel a little bit later, and then we won’t have the individual meetings we normally have out there. But we’ll be able to knock out our team meeting, then grab a bite to eat and get on with the evening. So, we’ll spend a little bit more time here with our morning meetings and get those done.”
The team will have their individual meetings prior to heading to Los Angeles late Saturday. Typically they’d have those individual meetings once they landed, but now they’ll only have their all-hands meeting once they arrive. It seems like they’re trying to limit the amount of time they’re out on the road and potentially exposed to COVID-19.
There won’t be any late-night trips to In-N-Out Burger for Reid or any of his players once they arrive ether. They’ll all stick at the hotel until they’re able to get to the stadium and prepare for kickoff.
As for playing in a brand new stadium, Reid feels they have a jump start on what that’ll be like after watching the Rams play in Week 1.
“The thing that jumps out at you is, I mean it was the sound there,” Reid said. “There’s that percussion that takes place in the stadium. You heard the ball hit the goal post and you can hear it on TV and as loud as can be and you can hear players talking in particular – yeah you can hear players talking during the game so you understand that with nobody in there, things are – anyway so they’re magnified a bit from a normal game.”
Players will have to be a little more mindful of the types of things they say on the field with the percussion in the new stadium and the lack of fans.
In the long run, it’s just a few changes that the Chiefs will need to get used to when they’re the road team. This will be good practice at following those new protocols. The team will hit the road again in Week 3 when they head to Baltimore to play the Ravens on “Monday Night Football” before being back at Arrowhead Stadium for Week 4.
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