For Ravens, relocating their NFL operation to London has been a full team effort

Simon Gelan’s second-floor office, which overlooks the three practice fields outside the Baltimore Ravens’ Under Armour Performance Center, is fittingly outfitted for a man in his position.

Model airplanes sit on a shelf behind him. Several sample blocks of NFL playing surfaces are stacked on a small table near the windows. A standing whiteboard, not much different from the ones used by the team’s football coaches in their position rooms, fronts one wall to the left of Gelan’s desk and serves as a constant reminder of the tasks that need to occupy his time and headspace.

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Gelan is the Ravens’ vice president of operations. He directs the day-to-day operations of the organization, a responsibility that includes training camp, team travel, grounds and facility maintenance, and catering for the players, coaches and staff.

In recent weeks, though, Gelan’s time and attention were focused on one area.

“Every day, a chunk of the day is spent on London,” he said late last month.

How does an NFL team, entrenched in a time-tested routine, go about moving its football operations for a full week more than 3,500 miles across the pond?

For the Ravens, it starts with doing things differently than when they last played in London in 2017 and were embarrassed, 44-7, by the Jacksonville Jaguars. That stands as the most lopsided loss of the John Harbaugh era, and the ramifications of players kneeling during the national anthem at Wembley Stadium were felt for a long time by the organization.

Six years later, the Ravens decided to fly to London at the beginning of the week rather than toward the end of it. Instead of being overseas for three nights and parts of four days, the Ravens will embrace a six-night stay leading into Sunday’s game against the Tennessee Titans at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The Titans will be arriving on Thursday.

“It’s mostly driven by the fact that we didn’t do well (in 2017), so we did the opposite,” Harbaugh acknowledged.

The Ravens arrived in London Monday evening, not much more than 24 hours after they departed Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh following a 17-10 loss to the Steelers, and still five-plus days away from playing their Week 6 game against Tennessee. They’ll practice Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at the Hotspur Football Club Training Ground, and then have a walk-through on Saturday. In between, there will be meetings, workouts, team meals and opportunities to go sightseeing.

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The week will culminate nearly five months of organizational planning and preparation that included about 10 different departments, countless team officials, near-daily meetings and phone conversations, and one frenzied on-site back in June.

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“Obviously,” said Bud Reinecke, the director of team services, “this is a monumental task.”

The goal of everyone involved in the planning is to make sure the 205 members of the organization who stepped off a Virgin Atlantic charter flight at Heathrow Airport Monday night, along with other team officials, family members of players and staff, and sponsors who will arrive in the coming days, immediately felt at home. Or, at least, as close to home as can be replicated in another country.

“What we always try to say is you want to bring Baltimore to London,” Gelan said. “You want to make sure that a lot of the things that we do, whether it’s in Cleveland, whether it’s in Pittsburgh, whether it’s in London, we try to have some type of consistency and familiarity for everybody. Everybody likes consistency. For us, a lot of the job is making sure that we bring that consistency from Baltimore to London.”

Gelan, 40, previously worked for the Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns, where he was part of the planning for two London trips. He was not in his current position with the Ravens in 2017 when they played their first-ever game abroad. Other members of the organization, though, carry that scar tissue.

The Ravens were 2-0 and had outscored two divisional opponents by a 44-10 margin when they arrived in London on a Thursday, less than three full days before kicking off against the Jaguars, who were veterans of the international series. Baltimore labored through practice at a nearby rugby club and then a walk-through the following day, fully unaware that it was about to take center stage in a growing controversy.

On a Friday back in the United States, President Donald Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who followed Colin Kaepernick’s lead and knelt in protest of racial injustice and police brutality during the national anthem, imploring them to “get that son of a b—- off the field right now.”

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Word had reached the Ravens players about Trump’s comments at different points, some hearing about it the night before the game and others the morning of. It spurred some emotional conversations. Players from the Ravens and Jaguars knew they were playing in the first game since Trump’s outburst, and all eyes would be on them to see how they’d respond.

During warmups 90 minutes before the game, Ravens players were still discussing their response. Several opted to kneel during the anthem. The rest of the team locked arms. Many Ravens fans fumed about kneeling, writing letters and calling team headquarters. A petition was started to remove the statue of former Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis, who knelt on the sideline in London alongside several Ravens, that stands in front of M&T Bank Stadium. Some fans disavowed the franchise for good.

As they departed London that Sunday evening, members of the organization weren’t fully aware of the fiasco that awaited them in Baltimore. What they did know was the team had just been humiliated on the field. It looked uninspired, distracted and, yes, tired.

“We fell flat on our faces,” cornerback Jimmy Smith said after the game.

The Ravens didn’t get a first down or complete a pass until there were just over four minutes left in the second quarter. Joe Flacco finished with 28 passing yards and a 12.0 quarterback rating. The defense allowed three touchdowns to blocking tight end Marcedes Lewis, who had three touchdown catches the previous three seasons combined.

After the shellacking, Harbaugh said he had no interest in Baltimore returning to London for a game. For five seasons, he got his wish. Then came the news in May that the Ravens would be heading back for a Week 6 matchup with the Titans. That it was preceded by two road divisional contests against the Browns and Steelers added to the angst.

“The only thing you can really do is just go a different time and do it differently,” Harbaugh said. “That’s the only thing you can control. All of the other factors that were a part of (the 2017 loss) were just multifaceted. Put it that way.”

The first order of business for the Ravens was deciding when they’d go. They consulted people around the league and different data and studies. There was no consensus. Teams that arrived in London early in the week had won and also lost big. The same held true for the late arrivals.

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“There’s no data — and we looked for it — to say when you should go out there and what’s the ideal thing,” Harbaugh said. “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. We just decided that we would get out there, get dug in, get sleep on Monday night, get sleep on Tuesday night, (and) get ready to have the best practice we can have on Wednesday.

“That way, kind of have all that out of the way and not be dealing with any kind of sleep issues and be at our best potential Sunday. That’s what we’re doing. We’ll see how it works out.”

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A direct flight from Baltimore to London takes just over seven hours. London’s time zone is five hours ahead of Baltimore. Lethargy was a common complaint from Ravens players back in 2017.

In mid-June, Gelan headed a group of 10 team officials, mostly department heads, who went to London for a two-day planning trip. The goal was to gain familiarity with the airport, team hotels, practice facility and game venue. Members of the Ravens’ IT, video, team travel, athletic training, public relations and equipment staff were part of the traveling party, which met with NFL UK officials while in London.

“You want to have people to have their eyes on things,” said Gelan. “Like IT, infrastructure, where do we have to put the server? Where do we plug in? What does the Wi-Fi look like? What does video look like? At practice, where do we shoot from? Where do we do our editing? Equipment, where do we set up? What does the locker room look like? For the grounds crew, how do the fields look? When are they getting lined? Where is the weight room, training room? Where do we lift? The bus company, where are we dropping off, where are we picking everybody up? What is the route we’re taking? For team security, how do we secure the building — exit points, fire stairs? You have to make sure everybody is on the same page.”

When the Ravens’ contingent returned from London, the next thing on their agenda was to start packing. The NFL sent an ocean liner, which departed from New York in August, overseas with gear and equipment for the five teams playing in London on three consecutive October Sundays. It was incumbent on those five teams (the Ravens, Titans, Jaguars, Atlanta Falcons and Buffalo Bills) to not only get their shipments in New York on time, but to have everything meticulously marked and inventoried.

That’s where Reinecke took the lead. A former local firefighter, Reinecke is in his 28th year with the organization. When the Cleveland franchise relocated to Baltimore in 1996 and became the Ravens, the team needed help in moving into its Baltimore County facility. A number of local firemen answered the call.

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Reinecke now heads a staff of 22, all active or former Baltimore City or County firemen, that occupies a number of roles for the Ravens, from shipping and receiving to laundry to maintenance to manning the down and distance markers at practice to working in the equipment department to picking up players at the airport or from medical appointments.

“We really are the Swiss Army knife of the organization,” Reinecke said.

For much of July and August, Reinecke worked with other departments to get together gear and supplies that would be on the ocean liner that departed from New York. The plane that took the Ravens players and staff to London Monday carried equipment and game day apparel, but a week’s stay warrants far more than that.

The Ravens placed 27 commercial bins on the ocean liner that arrived in London last month. Included in the bins were football and band equipment and stuff from the training room, IT and nutrition departments. Everything had to be labeled and recorded so one team’s shipment didn’t get mixed in with another team’s stuff.

“Had we made an error, it doesn’t just stop the shipment for the Baltimore Ravens, it stops the shipment for the entire NFL,” Reinecke said. “You just had to make sure you covered all the bases. It wasn’t just, ‘See you later,’ wave and away it goes.”

Reinecke said the team got feedback that the way it handled the shipment “should set the standard for the league.” It was a nice affirmation after an arduous process.

The process of getting the players ready to head overseas started during training camp in July. Player services manager Valarie Wideman and director of football information Megan McLaughlin worked with players to make sure they had passports and global entry. In 2017, Ravens offensive tackle Dieugot Joseph, who was signed five days earlier off the Bears’ practice squad, couldn’t accompany the team to London because there wasn’t enough time for him to get an updated passport.

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There was still plenty to do from an organizational standpoint, too. Vice president of travel Joan Fennekohl made sure the team charter had what the Ravens needed. Senior manager of team operations Dan Parsons was involved in helping with other travel tasks, and the team’s director of sports nutrition, Sarah Snyder, helped decide on the food offerings for the players for both the flight and for the weeklong stay. Head equipment manager Kenico Hines was in constant contact with Reinecke about what was needed on his end.

The league essentially picked the Ravens’ hotels in London and gave them options for their practice site. It also supplied different practice equipment to the Ravens’ training facility for the week, per the team’s request.

Otherwise, the team needed to work out logistics with a local bus company to transport to and from the airport, practices and game venues. The Ravens also needed to contract with a laundry, trucking and catering company for the week. Yet, Gelan acknowledged that you have to expect the unexpected, too.

“You know there’s going to be things that come up. You know that there are going to be times where you have to pivot,” Gelan said. “You’re going to have to be flexible, but that’s for me to be flexible and adaptable. We’re going to make sure that everything is right on par for everybody else. We always say, ‘I don’t want people to see the chaos. I just want people to see the final product.’”

While the Ravens were preparing to fly to Pittsburgh, Reinecke and nine other members of the organization arrived in London on Saturday. They unpacked the 27 commercial bins of team gear that arrived via the ocean liner; dropped in on both the team’s practice facility for the week and Sunday’s game venue; met with vendors; made sure the three area hotels that will hold players, coaches, staff members, team employees and sponsors were in order; organized the meeting, training and workout areas; and set up the locker room.

After months of meticulous planning, the moment of truth has arrived.

“The good thing about it is I personally don’t have to worry about any of that. I just expect it to be perfect,” Harbaugh said with a laugh. “Usually, people deliver.”

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(Top photo: Ian Johnson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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