Note to Joe Philbin: A game in London isn’t like any other game

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
It’s not every year that a team travels to London to play a football game. In fact, the last time the Dolphins were in London was in 2007 when they lost to the New York Giants, 13-10. Therefore, when a team travels there, it’s a whole new culture and a completely different world for players and coaches. However, Joe Philbin is trying to treat this like any other game.

“We want to keep it the same basically. We have to go over earlier. We’re leaving Thursday evening. We’re going to get there Friday and we’re going to get right into a normal day on Friday. We’re going to get right to work, get practicing, get our meetings going. (We’ll) give them some time Friday night. If they are here Friday night and they want to go out to dinner, they can go out to dinner. I’m not going to mandate what they do on their off time, that’s their time. Saturday, we’re going to do the same exact schedule, all the things that we would do here and then we’re going to have our meetings. We just want to make it as similar to what they do every time they play a football game as possible. And so I’m not going to mandate every single second of their time. Again, I think it’s going to be a great test for the maturity of our football team.”

Someone should probably tell Philbin that his players aren’t look at this like any other road trip. Brandon Gibson said that it’s hard to prepare for a game like this.

“It’s hard to prepare for that eight-hour flight, I’ll tell you that. It will throw you off. What you can do is try to sleep as much as you can to get adjusted to the time over there. But for the most part, it’s not a normal week and it does throw you off. [We’re excited] because it’s a different type of environment. I’ve been over there once already, but at the same time, you still have to look at it as a business trip. So we’re going over there to win and that’s a goal.”

Jelani Jenkins and Mike Wallace echoed the same sentiments as Gibson.

“It’s definitely going to be different. I’ve never been to London. I know this plane ride is about to be long,” Jenkinsa said. “It’s going to be a different schedule. We get there a bit earlier, so it’s going to be different, but I think it will be fine.”

“I’m excited. I’ve never been over there. I’m excited to see a different culture. I just want to see that man in the glass, that you can’t ever make laugh (The Queen’s Guard),” Wallace said. “I’m going to bring Knowshon (Moreno) with me, hopefully Knowshon can make somebody laugh so we’ll see about that (joking).”

Hopefully, the players are able to focus the way Philbin wants them to. If not, it could be a long and sloppy game on Sunday.

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