GREEN BAY – Kids who’ve been waiting perhaps in vain during training camp to get a football player to ride their bike will have an extra opportunity on Thursday.
The Baltimore Ravens will be in town for a joint practice with the Green Bay Packers on Thursday and a preseason football game at noon on Saturday. The Ravens have decided they want to see what this long-standing Green Bay tradition is all about.
Kids can line up near the visiting locker room entrance near the Invisalign Gate on the south side of Lambeau Field as early as 8 a.m., but should be there in any case by 9:30 a.m. Practice begins at 10:30 a.m. The Ravens will start practice on Clark Hinkle Field between Oneida Street and the Don Hutson Center.
If there are enough bikes, every Ravens player is expected to ride, including well-known stars Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry.
Packers players also will ride bikes on Thursday, as they do for every practice, so there’s opportunity for a lot of kids with a lot of bikes. The line for Packers players will be in the usual location near the Oneida Nation Gate.
Players will ride back to the locker room after practice, as well.
It won’t be a first time a visiting team participated in the bike tradition. In 2019, the Houston Texans did the bike thing, largely because J.J. Watt, a star, a Wisconsin native and a University of Wisconsin alum played for the Texans. No UW alumni are on the Ravens roster.
New Orleans players Zack Baun and Alvin Kamara rode bikes when the Saints were in Green Bay for a joint practice in 2022, but only Houston and Baltimore have done so as teams.
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Players riding bicycles to and from the locker room and practice fields during training camp is a decades-old tradition in Green Bay. Not all Packers players do it all the time, but the younger players are strongly encouraged to participate. At times, veteran players will opt out, but many will participate sometime during the camps. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur often rides bikes as well.
The players-riding-bikes tradition dates to at least 1958, according to Packers team historian Cliff Christl. It might go back as far as 1954, when the Packers held training camp in Stevens Point, but the evidence for when it started anywhere is sketchy. What is known is that from the Lombardi years on, it became a fixture of Packers training camps.
Thursday is the last practice open to the public this season. The game on Saturday is the final preseason contest. The Packers open the regular season against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 6 in São Paulo, Brazil. It will be the first NFL game to be played in South America.
Contact Richard Ryman at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @RichRymanPG, on Instagram at @rrymanPG or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RichardRymanPG.
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