Super Bowl 2022: Winds of change force Rams to move practice site

LOS ANGELES – So much for getting to stay home for the Super Bowl.

The Rams are going to take their practice on the road Thursday and work out in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena due to the high winds that have descended on their headquarters at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks (northwest of Los Angeles and more than an hour’s drive from Pasadena). The fabled site will provide some protection against the gusts that are forecast to reach 60 mph in some areas.

"If that’s the biggest inconvenience of playing the Super Bowl at home, that we have to get on a bus — and we do that pretty regularly anyway going down to SoFi -- our guys will handle that great," Rams coach Sean McVay said on Wednesday.

The team does not have an indoor facility at Cal Lutheran. Being in Southern California it’s rarely needed, and when it is the Rams normally just make the trip to their home stadium. This week, though, SoFi Stadium is being gussied up for Sunday’s big event so the Rams had to find another venue.

The Rose Bowl last hosted the Rams in 1980 when they lost to the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV. At that time, the Rams played their home games at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

As for the Bengals, they arrived on Tuesday from Cincinnati where they too lack an indoor practice facility. They are spending the week based at UCLA and using that school’s $65 million Wasserman Football Complex that opened in 2017.

Notes & quotes: Maybe it was having to shout over those winds on Wednesday that made McVay sound as if he’d swallowed a cactus. "I feel great, I just sound like (expletive)," he said through the rasp in his voice. "(Tuesday) I was in my office for a minute and I went to go talk to some of the coaches, I sounded like this, and I was like ‘What the hell happened?’ I got the honey, I got all the remedies going, and I’ll get my voice back" … The Rams had a walk-through practice on Wednesday. TE Tyler Higbee (knee) and OL Joe Noteboom (pectoral) were the only players listed as non-participants.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.