Recently, the Los Angeles Rams were a perennial laughingstock, a team you never took seriously. From 2012 to 2016, otherwise known as the Jeff Fisher era, St. Louis/Los Angeles won 31 games. “7-9” was a joke that opposing fans (along with the team’s own) made about a squad that seemingly always found a way to underachieve.
Then Sean McVay came around, and the Rams made the playoffs in his first season. The following year, they lost Super Bowl LIII. They have still never finished with a losing record in the three years since, always sitting at or near the top of the NFC.
Many lauded the now 36-year-old McVay as a trendsetter when he first started. A millennial offensive mind (savant, really) with impeccable recollection for the smallest details of a football in a league that, on the whole, refused to evolve. For the most part, the NFL has still refused to evolve. But McVay has only seemed to grow into the job as he coaches one of the best rosters, on paper, in recent memory.
McVay is now at the helm of one of the NFL’s premier teams. As long as he’s coaching the Rams, that won’t change any time soon. And with Los Angeles again on the precipice of a Super Bowl, if you let his bunch into the Big Game this time, with the lessons they’ve learned, it’s hard to imagine they squander the opportunity.
Here’s why the Rams will become the second-straight team to win a Super Bowl on their home turf.
How they got here
Every good team faces adversity and overcomes it throughout their season. That’s not only a fact of pro football but with people and life.
(See, you come to read my columns, you get sage advice, too.)
But it’s hard to argue the Rams (-3.5 favorites to win the NFC Championship over the 49ers at Tipico) faced too much of any adversity in direct comparison to their counterparts. At least, when you consider how much raw talent this de facto All-Star team has.
When they lost team captain Robert Woods to an ACL tear in early November, the Rams still had Cooper Kupp, Van Jefferson, and Odell Beckham Jr.
When they already had a devastating pass rush led by Aaron Donald and former lead running mate Leonard Floyd, they added former Super Bowl MVP Von Miller for the modest price of a few Day 2 draft picks. Given the pass rush L.A. has, it’s as if All-Pro corner Jalen Ramsey has half of his job done for him.
And, to backtrack altogether, when they had Jared Goff once running one of the league’s best offenses, they traded him for the once-maligned but extremely gifted Matthew Stafford.
It’s Stafford, above all, who mixes this drink.
.@CooperKupp put the team on his back.
This ending was WILD. #LARvsTB pic.twitter.com/6clEXf9SQq
— NFL (@NFL) January 23, 2022
Ignore the poorly-worded tweet giving sole credit to Kupp: The Rams don’t survive a defending champion, Tom Brady-lead team if not for Stafford. If not for Stafford, they don’t look like a star-studded juggernaut with the arguable best football player alive on their defensive side (Donald).
Everyone else is only in a position for Super Bowl glory because of him.
How they’ll win the Super Bowl
It’s difficult to pinpoint the best thing the Rams do as a team because they do everything well. This is no one-trick pony. This is a team that probably should’ve comfortably finished with the No. 1 seed in the NFC, rather than have to play a Wild Card Game.
This year, the loaded Rams were (takes a deep breath):
- Ninth in total offense and eighth in scoring (27.1 points a game)
- Fifth in passing offense and eighth in Football Outsiders’ offensive DVOA efficiency metric
- Fifth in that same DVOA metric, but on defense
- 10th in takeaways (25)
- 25th in sacks allowed (just 31) and third in sacks (50)
Most of the time, if you’re in the top 10 when it comes to efficiency on both sides of the ball, it’s the most straightforward predictor of a championship. It’s pretty rare to see any team without a top-10 unit on either side win a title. Even then, they’re still stellar in another specific aspect on that unit (see Chiefs, Kansas City, 2019, and a pass rush).
McVay’s Rams not only create big plays and protect the passer, they also harass the other quarterback and rarely make backbreaking mistakes. If I were a 49ers, Chiefs, or Bengals coach and/or player set to face the Rams on either of the final two weekends of the NFL season, I’d put my feelings in the words of Mr. Randy Savage:
It would unjustifiably be a position I’d rather not be in.
Why they won’t
Whereas the Rams are mostly sound in every phase of the game, they have one tiny, itsy-bitsy bugaboo that might prove to be an Achilles heel.
They’re in the holiday spirit of giving year-round. How kind. How generous. We should all aspire to random acts of kindness, not only giving the football away.
Matthew Stafford’s Rams (and I word it this way for a reason) were tied for seventh in the NFL in giveaways with 23. The gifted Stafford himself, who, yes, did add an element of explosiveness to L.A.’s offense, was responsible for 19 (!) of those turnovers with 17 interceptions and two fumbles.
When Stafford felt particularly generous, his turnovers (the way they often do) not only came at the worst moments but in bunches. Nobody can explode and be a hero and also implode the way this former Detroit Lion does.
Two picks, including a pick-six, against the Titans in a Sunday Night Football game.
Two picks, including another pick-six, against the 49ers in a Monday Night Football matchup against their NFC title opponent only a week later.
PICK-6! JIMMIE WARD'S SECOND INT.@49ers lead 14-0 in the first quarter.
📺: #LARvsSF on ESPN
📱: https://t.co/Pbh7qEl7Sy pic.twitter.com/6g3frhCZRB— NFL (@NFL) November 16, 2021
One fumble and, uh, another pick-six in the third-straight week against the Packers in a nationally televised late afternoon game.
RASUL DOUGLAS PICK-6
📺: #LARvsGB on FOX
📱: NFL app pic.twitter.com/8R0VM06wJG— NFL (@NFL) November 28, 2021
I could go on, but I do fear for Stafford’s mental health. (Also, he did eventually stop throwing pick-sixes in consecutive weeks.)
So far, through two playoff games, Stafford’s trademark propensity to capitulate hasn’t yet cropped up for the Rams. If anything, it was other respective Rams’ faults (including Kupp and Cam Akers, among others) for combining to fumble the ball four times and letting the Buccaneers almost steal a sure-fire victory.
But there will likely come a time when the Rams have to chase a lead in the NFC Championship Game against the 49ers, and if they’re fortunate, in the Super Bowl (currently +210 to win it all with Tipico) against Kansas City or Cincinnati. When you’re chasing, you’re pressing. When you’re pressing, you’re making mistakes. When you’re making mistakes, you’re going back to a quiet locker room while the other team celebrates.
If Stafford, the veteran gunslinger, isn’t careful under that pressure, he might find himself giving away the best opportunity these Rams have ever had at a championship.
Those who reside in Los Angeles have to hope they get Good Stafford instead.
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