Most coaches and players would dread having to spend a week on the road. Jim Harbaugh and the Los Angeles Chargers are relishing it.
With games in the Eastern time zone for two straight weeks, the Chargers are staying in Charlotte, North Carolina, this week before facing the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday in an AFC matchup of 2-0 teams. The Bolts began their extended road trip on a great note with a 26-3 victory against Carolina last Sunday.
“There’s no reason why we can’t have some fun. Let’s bring the board games and the snacks. It’s a team that enjoys each other’s company, which is one of the positive things I’ve noticed,” Harbaugh said about the extended road trip last week.
Harbaugh is no stranger to staying East when his team has back-to-back games. He did it with the San Francisco 49ers in 2011 and ’12, when the team practiced in Youngstown, Ohio, for a week. Youngstown may seem like an unorthodox choice, but it is the home base for the DeBartolo family, which owns the 49ers.
However, Harbaugh has fond memories of Youngstown since the Niners won both times after practicing there.
The Chargers have five road games in the Eastern time zone for the first time since 2005. The most recent time they had two straight weeks out East was 2004. In 2013 and ’17, the Chargers had two straight road games against East teams, but there was a bye week in between.
In 2018, the Bolts stayed in Cleveland before traveling to London for their “home game” against Tennessee.
Harbaugh realizes spending time away from home and from the team’s new palatial training facility isn’t ideal. But staying in Charlotte and traveling to Pittsburgh on Saturday is a difference of 3,908 air miles because it meant not taking two cross-country trips.
According to the NFL, the Chargers were forecasted to have the most miles traveled this season. The change in itineraries drops them down to eighth.
“The body clock, it’s like, we would fly back (after the Carolina game), and we would be getting back on a plane in practically 4 1/2 days and flying back. That’s the main reason for doing it — the 10:00 West Coast time and body clock. Just some of the studies, by people a lot smarter than me, have figured out that’s a good way to do it,” Harbaugh said.
Team captains Justin Herbert, Derwin James and Rashawn Slater were also all-in on not traveling back after the Panthers game.
“I’m of the mindset it’s a great opportunity for us to be together, to focus on our game, and spend time with each other, get to know each other,” Herbert said. “I think any time you spend a week with your guys, especially like it is in camp, I think it’s an opportunity for us to grow and to get better.”
While some of his teammates will break out the chess boards, Herbert will play Settlers of Catan. In the Risk-like strategy game, players try to gather resources to collect territory.
Harbaugh mentioned that he is more of a Monopoly player but also enjoys chess. Offensive coordinator Greg Roman, who was also on Harbaugh’s staff in San Francisco, doesn’t see much downtime for the coaching staff.
“It’s all business. We’re on the clock, but it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “It really is a good team bonding time because everybody’s around each other.”
NFL teams primarily on Pacific time are 260-303 since 1988 when they had to cross three time zones. Arizona is on standard time year-round, which slightly benefits the Cardinals if they have to play East in November, December or January.
After Sunday’s win, the Chargers are 55-58 since 1988 when going cross country, but they have won eight straight and nine of their past 10.
Besides Youngstown, which is 75 miles (120.70 kilometers) from Pittsburgh, the Chargers also had the option of setting up at The Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia.
The Greenbrier — which has three practice fields and a sports performance center that features a weight room and meeting spaces — has been utilized by the 49ers and Arizona Cardinals during the regular season. Denver will stay there next week between games against Tampa Bay and the New York Jets.
However, Harbaugh elected to practice for three days at UNC Charlotte because of his relationship with Biff Poggi, who is in his second year as head coach after two years at Michigan as associate head coach.
Charlotte practices in the morning, meaning the Chargers can remain on their regular 12:45-2:45 p.m. schedule.
“I’m excited to have him and excited that he can be here. Making that trip back after the Panthers game and turning right around to play the Steelers is a tough transition,” Poggi said during his Tuesday news conference.
It also means the Chargers can conduct on-field walkthroughs. When Harbaugh was at the 49ers and stayed in Youngstown, their walkthroughs were in a vacant parking lot behind the team hotel. In 2012, Harbaugh had buses surrounding the lot so that wandering cars, or possible spies from the Jets, could observe it.
“That was interesting. I mean, the conditions were pretty Spartan, but it was great,” Roman said. “We put the work in and just adapted. I think everybody had a great time.”
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Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert looks to pass against the Carolina Panthers an NFL football game on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Rusty Jones)
Los Angeles chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh speaks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Rusty Jones)
LONDON (AP) — Britain is facing a “staggering rise” in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on U.K. soil by Russia and Iran, as the two states recruit criminals to “do their dirty work,” the head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency said Tuesday.
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the United Kingdom if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
So far, the threats have been aimed at Iranians abroad who oppose the country's authorities. But McCallum said there is the risk “of an increase in — or broadening of — Iranian state aggression in the U.K.” if the Middle East crisis escalates with Israel launching a major attack in response to Iran’s recent missile barrage.
In a rare public speech setting out the major threats to the U.K. from both states and militant groups, McCallum argued that hostile states, radicalized individuals and a revived Islamic State group have combined to create “the most complex and interconnected threat environment we’ve ever seen.”
McCallum said there also is a risk that Israel’s conflicts with Iran-backed groups — the militant Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen — could trigger attacks in the U.K., though so far the crisis has not translated “at scale into terrorist violence” in Britain.
The number of state-threat investigations undertaken by MI5 has risen by 48% in the past year, with Iran, Russia and China the main perpetrators, McCallum told journalists at the U.K.’s counterterrorism command center in London.
McCallum said that since the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in Iranian police custody in September 2022 after being detained for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s mandatory headscarf law, “we’ve seen plot after plot here in the U.K., at an unprecedented pace and scale.”
He said MI5 and the police have responded to 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots since January 2022, up by a third from the figure of 15 the government gave at the end of January.
McCallum said Russia’s military intelligence agency was trying to use “arson, sabotage and more” to create “mayhem” on the streets of Britain and other European countries.
Both Russia and Iran often turn to criminals, “from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks,” to carry out their illegal deeds, he said.
Several alleged state-backed plots have led to criminal charges. In December, a Chechen man was jailed for allegedly carrying out reconnaissance on the offices of a dissident Iranian broadcaster in London. Separately, several suspects are awaiting trial in London over an alleged Russia-linked plan to attack Ukrainian-owned businesses.
Britain is not alone in pointing a finger at Moscow and Tehran. Germany has arrested several people for allegedly spying or planning attacks on behalf of Russia. In May, Sweden’s domestic security agency accused Iran of using criminal networks to target Israeli or Jewish interests in the Scandinavian country.
Past speeches by McCallum and other U.K. intelligence chiefs have emphasized China's increasingly assertive behavior, which in 2022 McCallum called Britain’s greatest "strategic challenge.” On Tuesday, McCallum stressed the importance of the U.K.-China economic relationship but said there were “risks to be managed.”
The U.K.’s official terror threat level stands at “substantial,” the middle of a five-point scale, meaning an attack is likely, and McCallum said that since 2017, MI5 and the police have disrupted 43 late-stage plots, saving “numerous lives.”
While about three-quarters of the plots stem from Islamic extremist ideology and a quarter from the extreme right, he said those labels “don’t fully reflect the dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies we see,” drawn from a soup of “online hatred, conspiracy theories and disinformation." Young people are increasingly involved, he said, with 13% of the subjects of MI5 terror investigations under the age of 18.
He also said there were worrying signs that the Islamic State group is attempting a comeback, despite the collapse of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria several years ago.
McCallum said that “after a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed efforts to export terrorism," and cited a March attack that killed more than 140 people at a Moscow concert hall and was claimed by IS, as “a brutal demonstration of its capability.”
MI5 has faced criticism for its failure to stop deadly attacks, including a 2017 suicide bombing that killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.
“The first 20 years of my career here were crammed full of terrorist threats,” McCallum said. “We now face those alongside state-backed assassination and sabotage plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war.”
MI5, he said, “has one hell of a job on its hands.”
Associated Press writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this story.
Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, delivers the annual Director General's speech at Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in west London, Tuesday Oct. 8, 2024. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)
Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, delivers the annual Director General's speech at Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in west London, Tuesday Oct. 8, 2024. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)
Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, delivers the annual Director General's speech at Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in west London, Tuesday Oct. 8, 2024. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)
