Rams vs 49ers. Game 1

I don’t know what to do with this.

I guess I’m just gonna sit back and watch, and hope for the best.

But I’ve never entered a season with this strong of a feeling about the roster and the coaching staff. This is off the charts.

Naturally, I expect the worst.

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

This team is so good that it can only disappoint.

I don’t know, man.

Every year, seems like, the Rams adjust things at the bye and come out stronger. Last year it was the offense that did that.

I can’t wait to see how they adjust everything after this bye.

Like, why not just line up Garrett and Donald on the DL, + 9 DBs.

They could call it the “party like it’s 99 + 9” defense.

…

The Rams don’t get a conventional Bye this year. As part of the “Let’s make the Rams’ schedule as difficult as possible” agenda, their Bye gets swallowed up with a Wednesday game, instead of having 4 more days “off.” The following week, they play on Thursday, and then they get what every Thursday team gets… a game Sunday next.

zn wrote:

10 Sun November 15 4:05PM ET @ Arizona Cardinals
11 Bye Week
12 Wed November 25 8:00PM ET Green Bay Packers
13 Thu December 3 8:15PM ET Kansas City Chiefs
14 Sun December 13 4:25PM ET @ San Francisco 49ers

And to be frank, outside of Arizona, their opponents in that stretch look pretty shabby….

…

Well, I think this is the key to optimism for this season. The Rams have only inferior teams on their schedule all season long.

RedAlice

More info on the plane. Also, says they arrive 24 hours before kickoff. So, it’s not deplane and go straight to the field.

The Los Angeles Rams will fly to Australia on a Qantas A380, which is the world’s biggest passenger jet.

Flight DetailsAirline: QantasAircraft: Airbus A380 (double-decker jumbo jet)

Schedule: Head coach Sean McVay confirmed the Rams plan to arrive in Melbourne just 24 hours beore kickoff.

The plane

The Qantas A380 offers a highly distinct, four-class layout configuration that will allow the Rams’ star players, coaches, and support staff to divide themselves based on premium comfort requirements.

Premium Upper Deck vs. Main Deck

The plane separates its cabins across two full levels:The Upper Deck is a completely private premium sanctuary containing 70 Business Class suites and 60 Premium Economy seats.

The Main Deck houses 14 ultra-luxury First Class suites at the front, with 341 Economy seats occupying the rest of the lower level.

wv wrote:

I am not perplexed; I think its nutz.

I’m on McVay’s side.

The plane trip is brutal, and there’s no getting around that. But that’s why he’s getting there 24 hours early. Everyone gets a bit to recover, but stick to the PST rhythms. Play the game, and get out.

I think it would be harder to acclimatize to a wildly different time zone and body rhythm twice in 3 weeks than to stick to the schedule, and ignore the sun. It’s minimizing the adjustment. All you have to do is rest up mentally from a 16-hour flight, not totally readjust to a completely different sleep and eating cycle as well, and then do all that again.

i’m very freaking nervous.

it’s beginning to feel like a burden. win and you’re really just doing what you’re supposed to do. everyone on the outside waiting for them to fail.

RedAlice

Note: this is fake. But funny.

BREAKING: #LARams HC Sean McVay addresses the "super team" commentary, previews upcoming opener against the @SF49ers in Melbourne.#ramshouse #fttb #nfl #nfcwest pic.twitter.com/hlIhGrNUa0

— HDWags (@Wags_Official) September 2, 2026

Zooey wrote:

This team is so good that it can only disappoint.

Zooey wrote:

Nobody wants to see the Super Bowl awarded to another team before the season starts. The Avengers. Yep, people gonna be rooting for them to lose.

wv wrote:

Zine it.

And that should be the team motto this year. Put it on all the programs.

Greatest Disappointing Team on Turf.

w
v

InvaderRam wrote:

i’m very freaking nervous.

it’s beginning to feel like a burden. win and you’re really just doing what you’re supposed to do. everyone on the outside waiting for them to fail.

Well, guys, your expectations ACTUALLY are this: you expect them to disappoint and fail.

In which case, if they do, then you can go “I knew it” and say yep that’s what you had to expect.

So you’re actually in a position where if they exceed your expectations–that is, they don’t disappoint or fail–then it’s a gift from nowhere.

So you’re in the position where you expect them to fail. And can only be surprised if they don’t.

***

wv wrote:

So….are we Patriot fans this week?

Is that what its come to.

Wed, Sept 9. Pats v Seattle

w
v

Sure. Ja. Ya’betcha.

But I took Seattle in my Confidence Pool which I’m already regretting having joined. As with Fantasy Football, this creates conflicts of interest, and I like my hope for a rival team’s demise to be pure, undistilled animosity.

wv wrote:

Zooey wrote:

I’m on McVay’s side.

The plane trip is brutal, and there’s no getting around that. But that’s why he’s getting there 24 hours early. Everyone gets a bit to recover, but stick to the PST rhythms. Play the game, and get out.

I think it would be harder to acclimatize to a wildly different time zone and body rhythm twice in 3 weeks than to stick to the schedule, and ignore the sun. It’s minimizing the adjustment. All you have to do is rest up mentally from a 16-hour flight, not totally readjust to a completely different sleep and eating cycle as well, and then do all that again.

Well, I’m on Shanahan’s side like any clear-thinking Ram fan would be.

I despise this whole Australia thing. Its ridiculous. Like, can you imagine any fan of any team clamoring for ‘more games in Australia’.

w
v

Here is a way to look at this (courtesy my wife):

Everybody is framing this as a time difference of 17 hours (between PST and Aussie time). But as we all know, the world is round, and calendars and time zones are arbitrary. So while Australia is 17 hours ahead of us (California) on the worldwide, agreed-upon calendar, they could be seen as being 7 hours BEHIND us. Instead of seeing Melbourne as having its sunrise 17 hours before California, as far as the human body is concerned, it’s sunrise is 7 hours AFTER ours. So if you set the calendar date aside – and we are because we will be watching the game on Thursday even though it will literally be played on Friday – the time difference is actually LESS than the time difference between Los Angeles and London.

It strikes me that what the Rams could have done – similar to the way they stayed in the EST zone prior to their London trips – is flown to Hawaii a few days ago. The time difference is 3 hours between CA and HI, and having just returned from HI myself, I can attest that the adjustment was pretty minimal. That would have placed the Rams a mere 4 hours difference from Melbourne (or 20 hours if you wanna stick to the calendar – which, I think, emphasizes the absurdity of saying it’s 17 hours different from CA, as Hawaii would be FARTHER away from Melbourne than Los Angeles according to the current way of thinking about this).

When you consider this, it would be far WORSE for east coast teams to play in Australia even though they are “only 14 hours different” because it would 14 hours one way, and 10 hours the other. IOW, we will probably never see the Eagles or Jets play in Melbourne.

wv wrote:

Ok, well tell your wife, she didnt dum it down nearly enough for me. I got lost in all that time-stuff.

What i want to know is: what did you see/do in Hawaii?

I always wanted to see the Pipeline. Sposed-to-be a beautiful wave.

w
v

Okay, well the Hacksized version is Australia is really only 7 hours time difference, not 17. And London is an 8-hour difference, and McVay’s plan worked fine.

As for Hawaii, I already told you about the shark encounter.

The other thing I saw was a wedding. Which is why I was in Hawaii because there is no way I would have gone to Hawaii given a free choice.

Since we were going anyway, we decided to stretch out the thing to 10 or 11 days, and make the best of it. We were on Maui the entire time. We drove the “Road to Hana” on the eastern side of the island which is verdant whereas the rest of the island is more arid. That’s an all day trip, there and back, with several points of interest to visit along the way: waterfalls, a black sand beach, botanical gardens, and so on.

Otherwise, we largely “beach-hopped” and snorkeled along the west coast where we stayed the entire time.

Oh, we went to a luau a couple of days before the wedding (with the bride and her family, who are the reason we went at all). There was Hawaiian dancing and historical narrative (which neither entirely embraced nor entirely rejected the harsh facts of colonization). It’s allegedly the best one of several on Maui, but it was kind of a passionless event at which I felt it was painfully clear that all the Hawaiians involved were just doing their job. Given 24 hours in their control booth, I could have made their lighting 10 times better. They had the equipment, but didn’t put any creativity into it which is sorta inexcusable because they were grossing between $75,000 and $100,000 a night (depending on how many “comps” or discounts they were giving). The direction wasn’t very good, either.

I doubt that I will ever return to Hawaii. I would actually rather live there than be a tourist. I liked the vibe. The Aloha/Mahola energy is really nice. I don’t know about the big cities (Honolulu and Hilo), but on Maui, everybody was pretty relaxed. No anxious rat race energy. All kind of “easy come, easy go” “what’s mine is yours” kind of thing. I actually looked up the high school in Lahaina (which is the oldest high school west of the Mississippi River (1831), and which escaped the devastating fire there 3? years ago), and wondered about getting a teaching job there. I could do that for a year or two. But I have no interest in being a tourist in Hawaii again.

P.S. Go Rams! Got a big game coming up against the 9ers, I heard.

P.P.S. The pipeline is on the north coast, and it exists only in the Winter, so we didn’t go there.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by Zooey.
• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by Zooey.