[RedAlice]

It's not surprising to me.

It was cold last season when the Rams destroyed the NYG in NY and it was cold last season in London when the Rams beat the Cards (33-0?).

I was at the NYG game.

It was not that cold. And I base cold on San Diego norms.

I did have on long sleeves. Did get wet from rain. Was never ever cold enough to button up the jacket.

[max]

I was at the NYG game.

It was not that cold. And I base cold on San Diego norms.

I did have on long sleeves. Did get wet from rain. Was never ever cold enough to button up the jacket.

We did get pretty wet. Sorry I missed you at that game.

[/zn/]

I find this quite surprising.

In the cold in Chicago with Goff’s poor history in the cold with those stupid gloves.

Wonder if Trubisky is hurt worse than we think.

Against Denver, I don;t think the biggest issue was the weather. I think Goff looked the same in both the Denver and Detroit games. I think the issue in both cases was a good defense (or in the case of the Lions a well-coached one with extra time to prepare) throwing things at the Rams offense they had not seen and which gave them trouble. I think the offense was thrown off rhythm in both games, and because of their resilience they won anyway in both cases (which testifies well to who and what they are).

His 3 worst games were on the road against defenses that were capable (for various reasons) of taking it to the Rams offense. In those 3 games (@ Seattle, Denver, Detroit) his avg. qb rating is 71.9 and he threw 4 INTs to 2 TDs.

And to repeat, they won all 3 games. So Goff struggling a bit (as a still fairly young qb) just does not end their chances.

Chicago is capable of the same kind of defensive challenge and the game is on the road. (Weather is probably an issue too, but I don't think it's the main one.) This one has a lot of the same parameters as the other 3 games.

You have to expect a Rams win but it could be another tough one.

[Rams the Legends live on]

The Rams played in Denver this year and it was unusually cold that early in the year.

I don't think this will be easy but I love that this team seems prepared for anything.

You live in Denver and I the Springs. So I always find Denver for the most part is just tough at home due to the altitude. I know teams come out early and practice to get their bodies ready and have them start making some extra red blood cells.

A interesting article came out a few years ago about a finding that if you do something at altitude then leave and go back within a week or two your body remembers the experience and you fare much better. So what interested me was how McVay played here then practiced out here for a trip that never happened to Mexico. Just increased my faith in the organization how they are going to whatever degrees it takes to make sure our guys are competitive come Sunday on the field.

Also other studies on it say it can take a full two weeks to 6 weeks to become fully acclimated. Anyway the long and short of it is I just find that I fall in the camp of Denver is tough at home not because of a 12th man but a third lung.

I will post the one article I used for reference as I also found it interesting when I read it a good year or so ago that altitude sickness cost our state 300 million in lost revenue when tourist get stricken with it while visiting.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10 ... ood-months

Two weeks in the mountains can change your blood for months

But mountaineers, backpackers, and other high-country weekend warriors have long known that this story might not be quite right. It takes weeks to produce new red blood cells, and even ordinary people can adapt within days. Now, the new study—the first to look closely at the blood of people trekking up and down mountains—has found that the body begins adapting to elevation as soon as overnight.

That’s where people like Earthman enter the story. To find out precisely what happens to the body at altitude, Roach’s team sent her and the other volunteers to a camp near the summit of the top of Bolivia’s 5421-meter Mount Chacaltaya, once the site of the world’s highest ski resort. After the first day, Earthman and her colleagues were feeling better. And after 2 weeks, they could finally complete their 3.2-kilometer climb, though Earthman doesn’t dignify the hike as “running.” “[It] was the hardest thing I have ever done,” she says.

The volunteers then left the mountains for 1 to 2 weeks, after which they went back up. Intriguingly, their bodies seemed to remember their prior experience at altitude, allowing them to fare much better than they had on their first trip up the mountain. In fact, they could still manage to get up the 3.2-kilometer hill—something that had been a problem for many of them at the start of their first visit, says Angelo D’Alessandro, a biochemist also at the Altitude Research Center.

When Lauren Earthman signed up for a research project studying the effects of altitude on the human body, she thought she knew what to expect. It would be tough, but Earthman—a freshman at the University of Oregon in Eugene—was a competitive 1500-meter runner, after all. Then, she climbed out of the oxygen-equipped bus that had carried her to an elevation of 5260 meters in the Bolivian Andes. She felt OK—until she had to walk up a set of stairs. Suddenly, even that simple action, she says, was “immensely more difficult” than what she was expecting.

A few weeks later, however, Earthman was speeding up a 3.2-kilometer hill with 20 other young participants in a study, called AltitudeOmics, that has now produced a dozen publications. The most recent finding: Even short exposures to high elevation can unleash a complex cascade of changes within red blood cells that make it easier for them to cope with low-oxygen conditions. What’s more, these changes persist for weeks and possibly months, even after descending to lower elevations. That finding may be a boon for medical researchers and also for hikers, skiers, and distance runners who don’t have time for extended altitude training.

Scientists have long known that the body adjusts to the oxygen-deprived conditions of high altitudes. At 5260 meters, close to the level of the Mount Everest Base Camp in Nepal, the atmosphere holds 53% as much oxygen as the air at sea level, making it harder to breathe—and to exercise. The traditional explanation has been that low-oxygen conditions cause the body to build new red blood cells, making it easier to supply oxygen to muscles and vital organs. “That’s been the story for 50 years,” says Robert Roach, lead investigator and director of the Altitude Research Center at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.

When scientists examined the oxygen-carrying proteins, known as hemoglobin, in volunteers’ red blood cells, they found multiple changes affecting how tightly it hung onto its oxygen load. Roach says a simplistic analogy is comparing this to what happens when baseball players loosen their grip on a mitt. “If I relax my hand, it will let go of the ball,” he says. Such changes had been observed before in the lab, but never in humans, and never at high altitude, the team reports this month in the Journal of Proteome Research. The scientists also found that the metabolic processes producing these changes were considerably more complex than suspected. And because red blood cells live for about 120 days, the changes last as long as the cells do.

That last finding tracks anecdotal evidence from veterans of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, who earned fame in Italy during World War II. Years ago, some of these veterans had told Roach that their bodies had seemed to retain adaptations from repeated trips to high elevation—a finding that tracks the experience of backpackers who return weekend after weekend to the high country.

Other scientists are impressed. D’Alessandro’s findings “should provide new insights into altitude adaptation,” says Peter Ratcliffe, a medical researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom who studies how cells react to low oxygen in cancer, heart disease, stroke, and anemia. Low oxygen is also a problem when trauma—from car accidents to gunshot wounds—causes blood loss. Finding ways to kick the blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity into high gear in such an emergency, D’Alessandro says, could save lives in both the civilian sector and on the battlefield.

But the potential benefits aren’t just for people suffering from such trauma. One in four tourists to the U.S. state of Colorado, for example, gets altitude sickness each year, costing the state about $300 million in lost revenue, Roach says. Understanding how the body adapts to altitude could lead to better medications for these tourists. It could also lead to better preparations for another brand of travelers—astronauts. If scientists can figure out how animals like bears, bats, and mice survive the low-oxygen effects of hibernation, D’Allesandro says, it could lay the groundwork for human journeys to not just the mountains—but maybe to Mars.

[HAL 9000]

Does anybody know if the Rams are staying in the Midwest to acclimate to the colder environment? I would assume so.

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Against Denver, I don;t think the biggest issue was the weather. I think Goff looked the same in both the Denver and Detroit games. I think the issue in both cases was a good defense (or in the case of the Lions a well-coached one with extra time to prepare) throwing things at the Rams offense they had not seen and which gave them trouble. I think the offense was thrown off rhythm in both games, and because of their resilience they won anyway in both cases (which testifies well to who and what they are).

His 3 worst games were on the road against defenses that were capable (for various reasons) of taking it to the Rams offense. In those 3 games (@ Seattle, Denver, Detroit) his avg. qb rating is 71.9 and he threw 4 INTs to 2 TDs.

And to repeat, they won all 3 games. So Goff struggling a bit (as a still fairly young qb) just does not end their chances.

Chicago is capable of the same kind of defensive challenge and the game is on the road. (Weather is probably an issue too, but I don't think it's the main one.) This one has a lot of the same parameters as the other 3 games.

You have to expect a Rams win but it could be another tough one.

Good D on the road is a plausible explanation. Still, I believe weather is a factor. Goff said it bothered him after the Denver game. He actually responded to Thiry, “were you cold? Yeah, it was cold out there.” I took that to mean it bothered him.

My guess is that the combination of good D and cold weather will be a big problem for Goff. That’s why I was very surprised to see that 4.5 number.

If the Rams win in Chicago I expect it to be mostly because of Donald and Gurley (again). Goff has yet to show me he is ready to have a good game in that situation.

And that is a big reason why Goff isn’t a MVP candidate. He’s a pro bowler, maybe. He’s behind Brees, Wilson, but maybe not Rodgers this year in the NFC.

[max]

Does anybody know if the Rams are staying in the Midwest to acclimate to the colder environment? I would assume so.

They flew back to LA. They’ve got a lot of work to do this week and need all their home resources. I think that’s right.

[snackdaddy]

Does anybody know if the Rams are staying in the Midwest to acclimate to the colder environment? I would assume so.

Maybe they can train with the right equipment?