The 49ers are making a fairly short trip to L.A. on Sunday. They’re nevertheless traveling on Friday.
“I don’t like to change up what we normally do,” coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters on Friday. “It just feels like we normally leave on Fridays because it seems like we’ve had so many road trips recently. But a number of players hit me up Sunday, right after the Rams won, they hit me up Sunday and asked if we could go on Friday, and I was pumped they asked because I like going on Fridays more now. You get more time to focus and get right to the game. And so that’s what we’re doing. We’re still going to try to land there like we would like we’re going to the East Coast, which usually around like 10:30, 11, so right when we get there we go to bed. So we just finished up here. We’ll probably go home, spend a few hours with our families and come back here and get on the bus around eight.”
Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was among those who asked Shanahan to stick with the Friday travel plan.
“Yeah, it was a group of us who were all interested in that,” Garoppolo told reporters on Friday. “It’s kind of been our routine on most away trips this season. So I think it just gets guys locked in. I’ve got a pretty good routine as far as studying and things like that. And just when we leave on Friday, it allows you to stay more locked into the gameplan and eliminates distractions.”
Indeed it does. But the players need to want to do it. And they do. Whether of not it makes a difference, if they think it makes a difference then maybe it does.