The Cardinals are scheduled to play the Rams at Twickenham Stadium in London on October 22, which has players on the team paying close attention to the recent acts of terrorism in the United Kingdom.
A bomb went off at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last month and there was another attack on and around London Bridge last Sunday that killed seven people. There were also attacks in London in March and safety Antoine Bethea said that his confidence that the league and British authorities will do everything possible to create a safe environment hasn’t erased all concern.
“I’ll be lying if I said I’m not worrying about it,” Bethea said, via ESPN.com. “Things have been going [on] at some big-time events and things of that nature. But, at the end of the day, I’m pretty sure everybody, the league, they’re going to take as much precaution as they’re going to take to protect the team, the staff and even the family members that are traveling over there. You try not to focus on it too much, but being a human and just being real and just watching the news and seeing what’s going on, you can’t turn a naked eye to that.”
Coach Bruce Arians said he believes that changing “the way you think or what you do” gives a win to terrorists and said that the possibility of another attack is “not going to scare us off.” Players are adapting their plans as a result, however. Bethea said he hasn’t made a final decision about whether his family will come on the trip and quarterback Drew Stanton said his family has scrapped plans to come along.