Friday night was not a restful night for professional sports teams on the road.
On the same night the charter plane for the Oklahoma City Thunder encountered what was likely a bird strike, the Cleveland Browns found themselves evacuated in the early morning from their U.K. hotel due to a gas leak.
The Browns, who are in England to play the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, are staying and practicing at the Pennyhill Park Hotel & Spa in Bagshot, located about 30 minutes from London.
At roughly 5:45 a.m., the hotel suffered a gas leak in the kitchen area, according to Cleveland.com, forcing the players to evacuate to their temporary locker room located in the hotel parking lot. The team was displaced for about an hour before being able to return to their hotel rooms.
The evacuation caused the NFL to delay a Saturday walk-through for the two teams. The change in schedule also meant some players had to cancel an appearance at an NFL U.K. fan forum on Saturday afternoon.
The game is a "home" game for the 0-7 Browns who will face down the 5-2 Vikings at Twickenham Stadium at 9:30 a.m. EST on Sunday.
According to SBNation, the game is the third of three international matchups in a partnership between the NFL and the U.K.'s Rugby Football Union. The agreement, inked in 2015, called for the NFL to host three regular season games over three years at the Twickenham "rugby cathedral" in an effort to expand the NFL fan base in the United Kingdom.
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