Super Bowl LIII Diary from Opening Night

Hello, Rams fans. It’s your friendly neighborhood Falcons blogger, Jeanna Thomas, from The Falcoholic and SB Nation. I’m on site at the Super Bowl this week covering all of the events leading up to and including the big game, and I’ll be sharing the experience with you each day right here on the best Rams site on the internet.

As always, the NFL kicked off the festivities on Monday with Opening Night. If you’ve watched even a few minutes of this on television, then you know that it’s an absolute circus, with people milling about everywhere and folks wearing costumes and whatnot to ask ridiculous questions.

Speaking of ridiculous questions, I was working on some fun social things for SB Nation. We wanted to know whether Rams players prefer Dunkin’ Donuts or Waffle House. Seeing as how Waffle House is extremely Atlanta, I was pleased to see that most Rams players had the right answer. You can check out a lot of their answers — including a hilarious one from some Rams cheerleaders — on SB Nation’s Instagram story.

The Rams’ media availability at Opening Night was actually fun. You could tell that players were excited to be there and answer questions, even if they were rooted in fake investigative journalism about breakfast options. It was a pretty stark contrast with the Patriots’ session.

Each team’s session lasts for an hour, and there’s a full hour in between so staff can get the venue reset for the Patriots. I went to the media room to upload my videos for work, and felt like I barely sat down before I had to hustle back for the Patriots. As a Falcons fan, this was not my preference, but just part of the job.

The Patriots’ time was totally different. Players didn’t want to talk for the most part. The guys at the podiums are always top players, and while it was about impossible to get to any Rams players (except Rodger Saffold, who prefers Waffle House and has a really delightful laugh) at podiums, people were so focused on guys like Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman.

It was easy for me to walk up and ask James White, Patrick Chung, and Trey Flowers — all podium guys for the Patriots — which super-villain they’d like to be. (The Patriots are basically the NFL’s super-villain. They could have just said themselves, but most of them said The Joker.) But media were much less interested in talking to guys who weren’t Brady, Gronk, or Edelman, so many of the guys who weren’t at podiums just hung back and tried to avoid attention.

Opening night is a blur, and I’ve got to be back at it in the morning for Rams media availability at 11:00 a.m. I’ll be checking the comments on this post afterward, so please shoot any questions you have about Super Bowl week my way, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

See you tomorrow, and go Rams.