Even during a busy week of game preparation, the Ravens will still get a chance to enjoy some Thanksgiving dinner with their families.
The team has altered its practice schedule during the week to account for both the holiday and the West Coast trip to San Diego Sunday.
"We'll have to work around all of that, and we've put a schedule together to account for that," Head Coach John Harbaugh said. "We're treating this, in some ways, as a short week because of the time [change]."
During a typical game week, Thursdays are often one of the longer work days for the players, with meetings lasting until about 5 p.m. This week, however, Harbaugh has the team practicing Thursday morning so that they can enjoy the holiday.
"We'll have a shortened day on Thursday with Thanksgiving to give the guys a chance to be with their families," Harbaugh said.
As another component of the schedule, the Ravens also practiced later than normal Wednesday and will do so again Friday. The later practice schedule is part of an effort to get the players' bodies adjusted to West Coast time during the week.
The Ravens medical staff reviewed a number of sleep studies during the offseason as part of an effort to see how they could better prepare for cross-country trips, and gradually pushing the practice time back during the week is one way to adjust to a time change.
"Our doctors here have looked very heavily into the different studies on body clocks and things like that," Harbaugh said. "We're going to move some of our practices back later on Wednesday and Friday and try to get our guys adjusted to West Coast time."
As they typically do for West Coast trips, the Ravens will leave for San Diego on Friday night. They will then have a full day of practice and meetings in San Diego before Sunday's game, which starts at 4:05 p.m. EST.
