The Super Bowl is played at a predetermined site every year, which usually eliminates home-field advantage. The Rams, however, will hardly be taken out of their normal game-week routine and will use the same game-day locker room that they use during the season.
“We’re going to try to keep everything as normal as possible,” Miller said.
Rams Coach Sean McVay said the team will try to find the best balance between taking advantage of staying in its normal groove, but not allowing that routine to make the players sluggish by game day.
“It’s a blessing to be able to be at home,” McVay told reporters the day after Los Angeles’ N.F.C. Championship Game win over the San Francisco 49ers. “But you also want to make sure that the magnitude of this game, even though we are playing at our home stadium, in our home city, it doesn’t take away from the focus of finishing the task at hand, and that’s trying to get one more win.”
Playing a Super Bowl in the Los Angeles market, one of the league’s biggest, presents its own potential for distractions. McVay has spoken about having a “quieted mind,” and the players are eliminating any potential disturbances in different ways.
Miller is taking a break from social media until after the game. Matthew Stafford, the former Detroit Lions quarterback whom the Rams acquired during the off-season, said he shelters himself from a lot of outside noise anyway.
“They’re doing a great job for us as a team to kind of help us get tickets and all that stuff out of the way early, and then you can just go out there and focus on football,” said Stafford, who doesn’t appear to have any social media platforms.
Players, Miller said, can sometimes get so caught up in the repetitive cycle of going to work, watching film and lifting weights that it gets hard to step back and realize the position they’re in.
“It’s hard to get to this point. It truly is,” said Aaron Donald, the Rams’ All-Pro defensive tackle. “My second time around getting here, I think this time I really appreciate it this much more because I really got to sit back and think about it. This is special, man. And there’s guys that play this game forever and never get to this point.”
