EARTH CITY, Mo. — The St. Louis Rams returned to the practice field Wednesday, just 40 hours after losing on Monday night to the San Francisco 49ers, knowing that things only get tougher with the Seattle Seahawks coming to town Sunday.

After the slimmed-down 60-minute workout, coach Jeff Fisher said, “Success on short weeks really requires two things: preparation, recovery. We got a lot of that done today. We cut practice down a little bit. Had a really good session this morning; installation. Tomorrow, we’ll let them get their legs back and we’ll be right back on our schedule.”

On Tuesday, Fisher talked about the reality of playing on Monday night: “Everybody gets all excited about Monday night games, except for the coaches because it’s a short week. It’s hard. The coaches looked at the game real quickly. I looked at it quickly this morning. We’ve moved on to Seattle. We’ll bounce back. We have a big challenge this week with the Seahawks. We’re going to abbreviate things tomorrow and get right back into the game plan.”

A later than normal practice on Wednesday allowed the coaching staff to get in more game-planning, and Fisher said, “We’re caught up. It’s amazing if you have a long week, then you take every second. If you have a short week, you always get caught up. Long weeks are harder because you find more things to do.”

It also helps that as tough an opponent as the Seahawks are, the teams do play twice a year.

“We know them very well,” Fisher said. “They’re very, very talented. They’re playing good ball and I know they’re a little disappointed in the results last weekend. But this is a good football team. We know it’s going to require a lot out of us. Again, it’s another physical team. I thought we matched the 49ers; we went toe to toe with them physically. We have to do that again with these guys.”

Quarterback Austin Davis said the short week forced the team to put the sting from the loss to San Francisco behind them quickly.

“We came right in yesterday and got to work,” Davis said Wednesday. “I think the good thing is schematically they’re a pretty simple group. But the challenge is they’re really good at it. Being familiar with them, we play them twice a year, we know what they’re going to do and we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

As what makes the Seattle defense so tough, Davis said, “I think it starts with the secondary. It’s just a really good group. They come up and press your receivers. Kind of play like man on the outside. The linebackers are athletic and fast and move. D-Line’s really the same way. This is a really, really good defense and we’ve got to be ready to play.”

Davis was on an impressive roll in three starts and the first half of the San Francisco game before experiencing extreme adversity in the second half.

After watching the tape from Monday, he said, “I think there were some opportunities to take some completions in the second half. We got down and I probably forced a few things. Just, when things aren’t going great, you’ve got to find some positive plays just to kind of get things back on track. And you’re playing a good defense.

“At the end of the day, you’ve got to understand that they’re going to make some plays. You’re not going to run up and down the field. You’d like to, but it’s just not reality to think you’re going to run up and down the field all day on a good defense. So I think the ability to let bad plays go and take the completions that come. Just kind of keep the offense moving will be big.”

Davis certainly isn’t flinching from playing two straight games against two of the better defenses in the league.

“What else could you really ask for? As a competitor, you want to go against the best to see how you stack up,” he said. “I think for this offense it’s the way we need to look at. It’s a great challenge and we’ve continually progressed and I think we’re going to begin to see some results before long.”