Eagles holding mock halftime at practice to get ready for Super Bowl Sunday

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – One of the most difficult adjustments for the participating players in the Super Bowl is the extended pregame and halftime down time.

There is a 40-minute wait for players between the end of pre-game warmups and the opening kickoff. That's more than twice as long as for a regular-season game.

Halftime, which lasts just 12 minutes during the regular season, will be a half-hour on Sunday so that you can enjoy the full Justin Timberlake effect.

"It is a long time, pregame and halftime,'' Eagles coach Doug Pederson said Wednesday during his news conference. "I've begun conversations with our players preparing them for it.''

Part of that preparation Wednesday was a "mock'' halftime during the team's practice at the University of Minnesota.

"We've done a lot of research on when exactly we can get (back) out (on the field),'' special teams coordinator Dave Fipp said Wednesday morning. "There's a lot of dynamics to the thing. Pregame ceremonies. Festivities. Halftime stuff.

"But we've kind of laid all that stuff out. Today, at practice, we're going to kind of go through a mock halftime situation deal. We're going to stop, go in the locker room, do what we do on game day and then come back out. So that should be good.''

Said center Jason Kelce: "We're going to get used to how we're going to handle the (extended halftime) situation and how we're going to try and stay loose and not tighten up by sitting in a chair for 30 minutes. That's probably a bad idea.

"Those guys (the coaches and training staff) are all on top of that stuff and they're going to try and simulate everything during the week, so we're ready to deal with it on Sunday.''