LONDON – The Chicago Bears landed in the United Kingdom on Tuesday morning, five-plus days before playing the Jacksonville Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

The Jags don’t arrive until Friday. While they’re not a perfect example of differing approaches to playing in London – they now play two consecutive games here each year as the city’s de facto home team – there are competing schools of thought regarding how to approach peak performance on game day despite all the extra travel.

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The goal is to mitigate the impact of jetlag on sleep patterns, physical recovery, practices and the games themselves.

Then Bears head coach Matt Nagy chose to fly over on a Thursday night in 2019, following two practices at Halas Hall.

Current head coach Matt Eberflus and these Bears are going over earlier.

“Just to get over there and get our clocks right,” Eberflus said. “That’s the science part of it.”

The Bears have studied the results and the scientific support for different travel strategies, resolving that there isn’t one empirically right answer.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s any numbers that tell you that one way or another,” Eberflus said. “But to me, it’s about focusing on us. That’s really all we can do.” 

The Bears will alter their practice schedule somewhat this week. Tuesday is a standard off day on the NFL calendar and will remain so. Wednesdays are generally physical practices and often padded, but that session will be switched to a walk-through style of practice to help get the players right.

They’ll get in more regularly paced work in on Thursday and Friday, with a standard Saturday walk-though before a Sunday game.

Regarding player routines, Eberflus doesn’t want those to change much.

“It’s a little different, right? It’s planes, trains, automobiles — all that stuff,” Eberflus said. “And then you’ve got to really wire into doing your job.

“And to me, it’s about staying with your routine. Whatever time you go to bed, go to bed at the same time, don’t change it. You got to make sure you’re doing that and we have to do that as a group.”

Most teams have an international game scheduled every now and then. The Jaguars have played in London annually since 2013 – save the COVID-19 impacted year in 2020 – and will play consecutive games in London for the second year in a row.

Jacksonville will get the Bears first and then will stay put before playing the New England Patriots in Week 7.

Eberflus wasn’t worried about that or Jacksonville’s experience playing in London.

“It’s all about us,” Eberflus said. “And that’s what my mantra’s going to be and that’s what it’s always been. You focus on your preparation. We have Jacksonville and they present issues like every other team does and we have to deal with those issues and then we have to focus on our execution.”