Snow day.
I grew up in California, so we didn’t have snow days. But my friends from locations in the east that did have snow each year, and on some days when it was heavy, would get a school day off because of a “snow day.”
The Los Angeles Rams are from California too, the Houston Texans from a location that doesn’t often have snow, and they are going into winter conditions in two cities that do have winter conditions that will sometimes close schools, Foxboro and Chicago. Play a game in Chicago that begins at 5:30 p.m. in January and you can pretty much count on what we have for today’s game between the Rams and Chicago Bears. Temperatures in the teens and snow. It will be a little “warmer” for the Patriots contest against the Houston Texans, some snow but game time temperatures expected to be 33 degrees.
Some think the cold weather will automatically be an advantage for home teams used to the cold. In fact, as long as heavy wind is not involved, a factor that is more influential to the play on the field, cold weather I’m told by players is not that big of a deal.
A bigger deal is the motivation and talent of these four squads and that will determine which pair will survive today and join the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks in next week’s Championship Games.
The Rams are one of the best fifth seeded teams in history. They opened the playoffs as one of the favorites to win Super Bowl LX next month at Levi’s Stadium despite their playoff seeding. The Rams playoff seed is a result of finishing behind the Seattle Seahawks in their NFC West Division race. Their regular season record, 12-5, would have been good enough to win any other division in the National Football Conference, but only got them a second-place tie with San Francisco and a two-game deficit to the division winning Seahawks in the NFC West.