The Los Angeles Rams will have to travel across the country this week to take on the Ravens in Baltimore, a difficult matchup against a potential playoff team in the AFC. The game was originally scheduled for 4:25 p.m. ET, but on Monday, the NFL flexed it to the earlier window at 1 p.m. ET – which makes this the dreaded 10 a.m. PT kickoff for a West Coast team.
Surprisingly, Sean McVay is actually happy about it. He would rather play early on Sunday than later, explaining why to reporters Monday night.
“No, I like it. We would be in favor of that. I think it’s better,” he said. “We’ve learned to kind of travel on those short trips – or not those short trips, but those early window trips on East Coast time zones or Central time zones. Our guys handle it well. I like it better that way, where we get up, we go, we go play. Our guys have a good look in their eye in the mornings. They’ve handled those windows really well this year, and that’s kind of been a consistent theme for us the last handful of years. So that was actually something that we were excited about – being able to get up, go, we’ll travel out there, and it’ll be very similar.”
McVay isn’t wrong about his players handling the early kickoff well this season, and it even goes back to his first season with the Rams. Since 2017, the Rams are 8-2 in 1 p.m. games in the Eastern Time Zone, including 2-0 this season. Their only losses came to the Dolphins and Bills last season, and they’ve scored at least 27 points in all but one of those 10 games.
The Rams will also benefit from having a full week of practice after being limited by COVID-19 and the weather the last three weeks.
“I don’t know what the hell to do with myself, having a normal week to prepare now,” McVay joked. “The last three weeks have been such a whirlwind, being able to look at actually having three legitimate days of preparation feels like we’ll have three weeks. So, that’s a good thing but I was actually encouraged by that.”
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