It's more like a relocation than an extended road trip. The entire San Francisco 49ers team has uprooted from Santa Clara and moved to Glendale, Arizona, due to new local restrictions in its home county prohibiting professional sports. Under normal circumstances, the move to Arizona might be fun for some players. The year 2020 has been anything but normal, though.
COVID-19 is still threatening in Arizona. More so, even, as the highly-contagious virus has impacted Maricopa County more than Santa Clara County. It's just that local restrictions there have not banned contact sports. That means the 49ers are living and working in a self-imposed bubble. They will try to avoid interacting with their new environment.
That can be difficult.
Practices will be the only opportunity for players to be with one another physically. All meetings will be held virtually, with players remaining in their Renaissance Hotel rooms during the Zoom calls. They have workout and training facilities at the hotel. The massive hotel was already capable of hosting an NFL team. It's where the Cardinals held training camp.
Still, for the most part, the players will be isolated. That type of isolation for an extended period of time — possibly the remainder of the season — can take a mental toll, and head coach Kyle Shanahan wants his players to look out for each other.
Shanahan gave the example of the NBA playing its season in a bubble and all of the mental issues that emerged from the experience.
"Those guys were at least allowed to hang with each other," Shanahan told reporters on Thursday via Zoom. "We're not, so we're basically just in rooms here. Haven't seen the guys except when we Zoom-meet them and then when we go out to the field for walkthrough, so it's not like we're in a bubble hanging out. So, those things will build up on guys, and each guy will handle it differently. "
The coach spoke to his players after they arrived in Arizona and offered some advice.
"So, I just try to tell everyone, no matter what, when someone has a problem, whatever it is, there's no problem too big or too small," Shanahan continued. "A lot of guys keep that stuff internally, but I met with a bunch of the players, and I grabbed about 20 of them last night and just told them to look out for that stuff and make sure that whether they come to me, a position coach, we have lots of people here who aren't coaches or players who can help people.
"So, it's just understanding that it's human nature. Some stuff's going to come up over the next three weeks, and no one ignore it. Just always bring it to someone's attention because the worst thing you could be in these situations is feel kind of alone on an island, and we've got a big group going through it, so we can rally together and make sure we help each other through it."
The 49ers will play their next two home games at State Farm Stadium, the home of the Cardinals. The first will come on Monday night against the Buffalo Bills, and then the team will host Washington on December 13. Shanahan's squad will play at least once more game at State Farm Stadium — this time as the road team — on December 26 when they face the Cardinals.
Shanahan did make one promise to his players.
"I just try to tell our guys that I don't care what happens; we're not going to spend Christmas without our families," Shanahan said on Tuesday. "We'll figure it out. That's really what I try to give to everyone just so they can say that to their families, because I think that is a concern. We had our game on the 27th, it got moved to the 26th, so we were going to be traveling to Arizona on Christmas afternoon anyways. ... I know our organization. They'll do whatever they can to figure out whether we're here with our families for that week or whether we have to get all of them to us and go through whatever we have to do to do that."
San Francisco may be allowed to host its Week 17 contest against the Seattle Seahawks back at Levi's Stadium. That's assuming Santa Clara County lifts some of the new restrictions after December 21, as planned. Of course, you never know what might happen because — well — 2020.
So for the 49ers coaches and players, Arizona could be home for the remainder of the season, and how the team handles that mentally is very important.
