BroBible
The Los Angeles Rams came out firing on all cylinders against the Jacksonville Jaguars in London on Sunday. Their unique travel schedule changed the NFL forever.
They proved all of the haters wrong with a strong first half!
As the NFL continues to expand its international schedule, I fully expect other teams to follow this new blueprint. It will be interesting to see whether those teams are able to replicate the same results.
The Rams beat the Ravens in Baltimore last week. They played the Jaguars in England this week.
Rather than flying all of the way back to Los Angeles and losing an additional three hours with the time change, Sean McVay and his staff decided to keep the team in Maryland to practice at Camden Yards. That allowed them all to adjust their internal clock closer to London time and to minimize travel for the weekend.
To provide additional context, London is five hours ahead of the easternmost coast of the United States. It is eight hours ahead of California.
There are two ways to approach games played overseas. Some teams prefer to fly in as soon as possible and to practice in the host country in the week leading up to kickoff. Others wait until the last minute.
Most teams have left the United States on Thursday night with an arrival to England on Friday morning. That’s what the Rams did in 2019.
It is not what they did this year.
They did not arrive to the United Kingdom until Saturday morning. That marked the latest arrival in league history. There was no media availability. The focus was only on the game.
“We’ll travel to London [on Friday night] and get there [Saturday] morning, have a walk-through, and then let guys be able to relax and get some rest,” McVay said. “Then we’ll be ready to kick off at 2:30 p.m. [London time] on Sunday.”
He was not lying. The Rams were ready for kickoff.
Los Angeles scored 21 points on more than 160 yards of offense during the first half. Its defense forced three punts, recorded three sacks and kept the Jaguars out of the end zone.
The Rams were not sleepy. They were not jetlagged. They proved you can show up to an international game with less than 36 hours until kickoff and not be affected by the time adjustment.
This is going to be the blueprint. I fully expect other NFL teams to follow this same travel schedule in the future. It will be interesting to see whether it works!
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