L.A. Rams head for Arizona and a crucial playoff game with their minds on their fire-ravaged hometown
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The players and coaches tasked with separating football from real life are finding it difficult, but they are determined to meet the challenges on all fronts when they “host” the Minnesota Vikings at the Cardinals' State Farm Stadium on Monday night.
The Los Angeles Rams wrapped up practice at their training complex Friday under blue skies with bruise-colored clouds of wildfire smoke lurking on the horizon.
The players and coaches then joined a traveling party of 355 people, six dogs and two cats and headed to the airport, where the Arizona Cardinals had sent two team planes to aid their journey to Phoenix.
“We’re going in there for everybody in Los Angeles — everybody affected by the fires, everybody displaced, everybody evacuated,” Rams linebacker Michael Hoecht said. “That’s what this week’s for, for us. That’s what we play for.”
The Rams (10-7) have been preparing for their biggest game of the season amid the catastrophic wildfires besieging the Los Angeles area. The players and coaches tasked with separating football from real life are finding it difficult, but they are determined to meet the challenges on all fronts when they “host” the Minnesota Vikings (14-3) at the Cardinals' State Farm Stadium on Monday night.
“Our community is hurting right now, so our organization is hurting,” Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff said. “But we have a chance on Monday, whether it’s in person or on television, to provide hope and a respite to our fans and our city, and to so many people who need it.”
Only a few Rams employees had been directly affected by the fires until Thursday afternoon, when the Kenneth Fire broke out a few miles from the team's training complex in suburban Woodland Hills, sending smoke billowing into the sky with alarming speed.
Many players, coaches and staff members live in the general area, and many of their families were either given an evacuation order or left out of caution — a group that included coach Sean McVay's wife, Veronika, and their 1-year-old son, Jordan, who met McVay at the training complex.
