BX: How do the Bengals travel?

For three times over this current three-week span, Bengals director of operations Jeff Brickner will arrive at Paul Brown Stadium around 4 a.m. on the day of team departure.

Advertisement

With hundreds of moving parts, most of them paid millions of dollars, organizing the operation demands waking up early.

Marvin Lewis heads to the locker room after a loss in Pittsburgh earlier this season.Sam Greene

And 10 times (plus potential postseason) each year, all eyes focus on Brickner to pull off a perfect traveling, avoiding traffic, feeding, sleeping, prepping, loading equipment and flying of over 100 passengers and 10,000 pounds of equipment on an itinerary cut to the minute.

“As long as you are prepared it’s going to go well,” said Brickner, promoted to replace retiring Operations manager Bill Connelly this past offseason. “If you are not it’s going to show because there are way too many pieces. If something is not done you are going to be exposed.”

Marvin Lewis jokes when talking about what he most desires in travel to keep the team ready on game day. All focus must be on every detail staying exactly the same from week to week.

“Because otherwise, we would lose somebody,” Lewis said with a laugh.

Keeping routine in different cities with different travel contingencies starts the moment the schedule is released in April, and goes into fascinating detail.

Every trip starts at Paul Brown Stadium. The team flies to every destination and TSA arrives at PBS to do screening there, then boarding buses and heading directly to the tarmac with a police escort. The same happens upon leaving the road stadium with secure screening there and taking an escorted bus to the airport. A TSA representative will board each bus to keep track of anybody potentially going on or off without clearance.

All this with a goal of leaving the stadium 45 minutes after the game ends.

The team has a contract with Delta, but the same size plane isn't available for each trip. Staff, sponsorship guests and even some media are part of the travel group, but it has to vary depending on plane size, with top priority given to keeping enough space for the players to stretch out.

Beyond that, the most important element of a trip centers around finding an accommodating hotel, which can become a chore. Brickner recalls dialing up about 13 different hotels trying to find availability in Pittsburgh this year before having to go back through the list again and find different points of flexibility. Depending on how busy the city is that weekend, even finding a place capable of accommodating them can be challenging.

Lewis recalls some coaches who would refuse to go back to a certain hotel if the team lost their last time there. Traditionally, the Bengals attempt to stay in the same places wherever they go, going back to the routine and consistency factor.

Also, Lewis wants all players with four years or less of experience to room together throughout the season. After that, they get their own rooms. They feel bunking up builds camaraderie among the young players.

“It’s good for them to get to know each other,” Brickner said. “There have been times guys are rooming together who may not be so sure about each other, by the end of the year they are best friends.”

Once locking in the hotel, the team nutritionist can go over what type of food the players need to be eating both on Saturday nights and Sunday morning to assure the menu caters to their peak performance.

“Nutrition over last few years has started to take off,” Brickner said. “There is a nutritionist that will take that menu, gets the chefs opinion on the hotels we are staying at. Gets their opinion on if they have specialty orders or something they do very well, whether filet or sirloin steak or some mahi-mahi, you want it to be very nutritious but be good and appeal to the players.”

The difference is in the details, all the way down to timing of check-in staying consistent, to assuring certain temperatures are set in the ballrooms for meetings and walkthroughs.

The club will eat a dinner, then a snack at 9 p.m. and be in the rooms by 11 p.m. The team travels with security to steer clear of any issue.

“We have our own security people with us so we are used to seeing the same people on the floors and in the hotels,” Lewis said.

Along with moving all those people, there is moving all the team gear. For some games, the team will truck home what Brickner estimates to be 10,000 pounds of equipment. If the game is within a five-hour drive, the trucks get loaded down and back. That will be the case in Nashville on Sunday.

Otherwise, for longer trips the team waits approximately an hour or so for the plane to load their equipment before taking off. Depending on the result of the game, that hour can feel very long or very short.

Take the sports with you. Download the Cincinnati.com app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

“We had one in Green Bay where we didn’t win,” Lewis recalls of the Week 3 overtime defeat against the Packers. “Then there was an issue with the plane, we wait on a plane from Detroit. When we were supposed to get home we were taking off. But generally, it goes pretty well.”

Lewis recalls when coaching in Pittsburgh playing against the Bengals In Cincinnati for a 1 p.m. September game and being home to cut his grass before the sun went down that night.

When all parts work together, it can be that easy. Making sure it goes off without a hitch is anything but.

“If something goes wrong,” Brickner said, “there’s only going to be one person they are going to be looking at.”