Rams coach Sean McVay will never forget his 33rd birthday.
“I’ve never really been a big birthday guy,” McVay said Thursday. “I think to be able to be practicing right now is a blessing. To be working with our players and coaches means that we made it to this final step, now we have to see if we can finish.”
This birthday will go down in history as the day he held his first major practice for Super Bowl LIII, which is set for 6:30 p.m. Feb. 3 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
It will a homecoming for McVay, who graduated from the Marist School.
“It means I’ve got a lot more people bothering me about tickets,” said McVay about having the Super Bowl in Atlanta.
After chuckling, he responded to the question.
“Atlanta, specifically where I went to high school, that place has been great to me,” McVay said. “I’ve had so many influential coaches. They really pour into you. They teach you about how to be a man. How to handle things whether if it be success or some adversity and that’s what’s real.”
McVay helped lead Marist to a state title in 2003 before going to play at Miami (Ohio). He got into coaching after playing in college when Jon Gruden hired to coach Tampa Bay’s wide receivers in 2008.
“Some of my closest friends in life are guys that I was able to play high school football with,” McVay said.
McVay believes the game will make the site irrelevant.
“But this is about the Rams going and playing in the Super Bowl,” McVay said. “It is unique that it’s in Atlanta. We are going in there to try to win a football game. There will be some people that are very special to me and my family that will get a chance to not have to travel too far to be there as well.”
The Rams started preparing in earnest for the New England Patriots at their facilities on the campus of California Lutheran College on McVay’s birthday.
“You really want to kind of treat it like a normal game week this week, understanding that you'll continue to tweak your game plan once you get to Atlanta,” McVay said.
“But, we want to try to get the majority of our plan in this week so that you can try to be cognizant of the distractions that'll take place and not really try to overload our players with a lot of new information.”
The Rams will practice again Friday and Saturday before leaving for Atlanta on Sunday. He wants his players to take care of family requests for tickets and another personal matters this week so that when they get to Atlanta they can focus solely on the mighty Patriots.
“It's really about making sure that you try to get ahead as much as you can, eliminate some of the distractions that inevitably occur just based on the nature of the magnitude of the game,” McVay said. “Then all the different people or friends and family that the players, the coaches want to take care of. So, try to knock those things out early on in the week.”
McVay plans to use the extra time wisely.
“Try to get a good jump-start on your game plan where you’re almost treating it as if you're playing this upcoming week,” McVay said. “Then, really, just tightening the screws. That's where we will rely heavily on (senior director of sports medicine and performance) Reggie (Scott) and (strength coach) Ted (Rath) and those guys to be able to help set up practice plans that are conducive for peaking at the right time in a couple weeks, but not ignoring the fact that this is a big-time game.”
The Rams are set to make their first appearance in the Super Bowl since 2002, while the Patriots are making their ninth appearance and third in a row under coach Bill Belichick. The franchise also went to the Super Bowl under Raymond Berry after the 1985 regular season and Bill Parcells after the 1996 regular season.
McVay hopes the Rams are oblivious to the distractions that start with a circus-like “Super Bowl Opening Night” event at State Farm Arena on Monday.
“There's a lot of other things going on, but our sole focus and concentration has got to be on enjoying the moment, but making sure that we're going to try to win a football game,” McVay said.
The game will feature Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, the elder, and Rams quarterback Jared Goff, who’s in his third season in the NFL.
“It's going to take a great performance and it's going to take a great couple weeks of preparation to get ready for what's really been the standard around this league for the last handful of years," McVay said.
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