By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE, Sept 10 (Reuters) – The Los Angeles Rams are banking on their body clocks to cope with a 13,000-km journey to Melbourne, the first stop on a long road they hope will end with Super Bowl triumph in their backyard at SoFi Stadium.
The NFL’s preseason favourites arrived in the Australian city early on Thursday, giving them just over a day to acclimatise before the 10:35 a.m. (0035 GMT) kickoff against the San Francisco 49ers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday.
While the 49ers arrived in Melbourne more than a week before game day to adjust to the time zone, the Rams have stuck to their usual “rhythm and routine” of training at home before their fly-in, fly-out business trip.
Part of the rationale is they hope to avoid the need to re-acclimatise to U.S. conditions when returning home for Week Two against the New York Giants.
The strategy has been debated by sleep experts and media pundits and the Rams road tested the long-haul trip to Melbourne with several players in separate trips earlier in the year.
The team collected and compared data from different approaches to travel and rest, but Friday’s game is the first regular-season match-up in Australia and it is impossible to know how the journey will affect players in the heat of battle.
Mickey McConnell, coach of the men’s college basketball team at California-based Saint Mary’s, returned recently from a tour of Australia and found his players lacked energy on the court two days after landing in the country.
“The first day is so long,” McConnell said. “If you don’t get good sleep on the plane, you’re just struggling to stay up on day one,” he told NBC Sports.
“I think the time difference, flight, all that stuff, played a huge factor (in performance).”
STACKED ROSTER
While some will look at Friday’s scoreboard to judge the Rams’ planning, Week One is only the first step in a long march to the Super Bowl on February 14.
The Rams have been stopped in the playoffs by the eventual Super Bowl champions in the last two years but have emerged as clear pre-season favourites in betting markets to win the Lombardi Trophy again this season, five years after becoming the second team to clinch it at their home stadium.
Quarterback Matthew Stafford, who guided them to their 2021 success and is the NFL’s reigning MVP, will have familiar faces around him including all six wide receivers from last season’s 53-man roster.
“Being able to be familiar with the way a guy moves or his body language in the run game, that helps a lot,” Rams wide receiver Davante Adams, the only player in NFL history to lead the league in receiving touchdowns with three different teams, said at training this week.
It is on the defensive side where the excitement is focused, with the Rams having traded for twice Defensive Player of the Year, Myles Garrett.
Aaron Donald, another defensive titan, has been coaxed back out of retirement.
The defensive tackle will not play against the 49ers in Melbourne, having only recently confirmed his comeback, but the Rams should cope without him, former wide receiver Torry Holt told Reuters.
“Obviously, you’ve got the Matthew Staffords, the Myles Garretts, the Aaron Donalds, who are the elite guys. But it permeates throughout the team. They’ve got a system,” the seven-times Pro Bowl player said.
“They’ve got really good expectations, and they have the mentality to get (to the Super Bowl).”
(Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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