We’re two days out, and things are definitely getting crazier in Atlanta.
Today was the Rams’ final day of practice before they take on the Patriots in Super Bowl LIII. You’d think that with the practice week in the rearview, things might settle down a bit here in Atlanta.
They don’t. At all.
Friday is a huge travel day, and I saw a lot more Rams fans milling around downtown near the stadium than I have all week. By my totally non-scientific estimate, it looks to be about twice as many people as were out here yesterday. And there will be more tomorrow, and even more on Sunday.
Today was a very different kind of day for me, as media availability is a thing of the past. Only one writer, Charean Williams of Pro Football Talk, was on hand for practice, and she provided a pool report detailing how things went for the Rams.
The best news was that everybody is healthy. Blake Countess (foot) and Greg Zuerlein (foot) were both limited on Thursday, but were full participants on Friday.
“It was a great day today, getting Greg and [safety] Blake [Countess] full,” McVay said. “We’re going into this game as healthy as you could hope for. Now, really it’s about just tightening things up, making sure we clean up any of the last little details, a little bit over 48 hours out. But there’s a confidence that I think has been earned. Certainly, we respect the Patriots, but we’re coming here with the expectation of winning a game.”
And just in case you were worried about Todd Gurley even though he hasn’t been on the injury report, McVay cleared that up, too.
He’s feeling good, a hundred percent,” McVay said. “We expect him to play a big role in this game.”
The team will primarily have meetings tomorrow as well as a walk-through at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. But there’s more to it.
“We’ll go over to the stadium and allow the families and friends who are here to come over and enjoy that,” McVay said. “That will be more of an appreciation with all the people that are here to share in this journey with our players and our coaches. Then, we’ll have quick, little meetings tomorrow night. We’ll get up on Sunday and have some walk-throughs and meetings and anxiously await that kickoff at 6:30 or whatever it is.”
Today was a very different day for me without media availability. I didn’t need to be downtown until late afternoon, so I was able to stay home and get some writing done. That’s good, because we’re in the home stretch here, and there’s still a whole lot of content to write. It was nice to not be pulled in a million directions at once for a few hours and actually focus.
Once I did get down here (after a two-hour drive — the traffic is already infinitely worse than usual, and it’s usually atrocious) I took some time to shoot a video with my friends RJ Ochoa from our Cowboys site, Blogging the Boys, and Bernd Buchmasser from Pats Pulpit. Today’s isn’t available yet, but here’s yesterday’s for your viewing pleasure.
This evening my colleague Natalie and I are going to an event with Juju Smith-Schuster and Martellus Bennett. That’s maybe the weirdest thing about Super Bowl week — the #brands are always up to something, even if it doesn’t directly correlate with the Super Bowl. I need to head that way, so I’ll sign off on today’s update. But I’ll be back with an update tomorrow, and for now, I’ll leave you with my piece on why Wade Phillips is a national treasure, as told by Rams players.
from Turf Show Times - All Posts http://bit.ly/2HNqYKk
No comments:
Post a Comment