Imagine what work would be like for you today if you had to go in three hours early. Now imagine that not only did you have to go in early, but you had a big presentation to give — like, huge! — to one of your most demanding clients, all in the very first hour you were there. How would you feel? Nervous? A bit groggy? Would you have been able to sleep the previous night? Some strong coffee and a pep talk in the mirror and you'd probably be all right.
But when your job is playing football, that first-thing-in-the-morning presentation comes at you fast and hits you in the mouth. If you don't start firing on all cylinders right away, you might look up and see that you're down 21-0, and that will be all she wrote.
There is no time to be groggy or jet-lagged on an NFL Sunday, especially when your opponent is the Baltimore Ravens. The Broncos play the Ravens in their backyard on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET, 11:00 a.m. MT. This is a full three hours earlier than they're used to playing, and is a bigger deal than it may seem.
Humans are creatures of habit. We wake up at the same time. We eat the same things. We sit in the same chair. We walk the same steps, and the end of the day, we lay on the same bed in the same position. If we're lucky, we sleep through the night and the next morning, the day repeats.
There is a reason for this ritual life — it allows us to optimize our production. This is especially true with athletes. Top-performers create predictable routines, maximizing the hours spent awake, eating healthy, training hard and getting plenty of sleep.
This is why every football team runs on a very detailed itinerary. Every day is exactly the same as the same day the week before, and each week is scheduled minute by minute. The time of the next game, and the time zone it's in, determines what the week of preparation looks like.
When the Broncos prepare for a home game, the heaviest part of practice takes place within an hour or so of the start time of the game. Circadian rhythms. Body clocks. Rest patterns. Meal consumption. Digestion. Energy reserves. A predictable routine leads to a predictable performance and reduction of variables. The fewer variables, the better. But when you travel to a different time zone and play an earlier game, the body clock gets out of whack, which can lead to a lackluster performance.
So how do you combat this body-clock jostling? A few ways.
One, don't wait until Sunday to align your body clock. The Broncos will fly east on Friday, so they'll have an extra day to get used to the time change, but it isn't even good enough to wait until then. In advance of an East Coast game, Mike Shanahan used to have us practice a few hours earlier on Thursday and Friday so our bodies were used to explosive movement in the morning hours.
On a typical day of practice in advance of a home game, after extensive morning meetings, we'd have a walk through on the field, then go in for lunch. After lunch was the real practice, which mirrored the 2:05 p.m. start time.
That all changes on an East Coast trip.
And when you are practicing earlier, you need to wake up earlier. And when you wake up earlier, yep, you have to go to bed earlier, too. This can present an obstacle. During the football season, there is so much football all day long, that the only "me-time" you get is at night. I came to really value this time, as I got to be alone with my thoughts, let my mind run away from football and unwind. Well, this week, there is no unwinding. Not only is the opponent fierce, but it's coming for you before breakfast has digested.
So, eat breakfast earlier. But will you even be hungry? Maybe, maybe not, because every player has a pretty detailed game-day ritual. I was rarely very hungry on game days, but I knew I needed to eat something. On the East Coast, I was even less hungry.
For road games, there were three different times that buses would leave for the stadium: the early bus, the regular bus and the late bus. But even the "late bus" isn't actually late. It still gets you there over two hours before kickoff. So depending on the distance between the hotel and the stadium, that late bus is probably leaving around 8:00 a.m. Denver time. For a home game, many of the guys would still be asleep at 8:00 a.m.
But if you are getting on the late bus in Baltimore, you'll have to be out of your hotel room, bag packed, breakfast already consumed, and ready to go play a football game at a time when you are usually snoring. And that's if you decide to be on the late bus. If you are a regular bus guy, like I was, or an early bus guy, you move it all up even further, and now you can start to understand how this can be difficult.
For guys who have trouble falling asleep the night before the game, it's even harder. Trying to get to bed early, but lying wide awake in the darkness, adrenaline starting to hum, then tossing and turning all night unable to ever really fall asleep. And when you finally do drift off, your alarm goes off what seems like only moments later. Time to get up! Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry are waiting, and they slept like babies.
I hope the Broncos have plenty of coffee.
About the Author: Former NFL wide receiver and tight end Nate Jackson played six seasons for the Broncos and is the author of the New York Times Best Selling book "Slow Getting Up."
