LOS ANGELES — A star will be born or reborn here on Super Bowl Sunday, inside a sprawling and grandiose Sofi Stadium built precisely for this, the world’s biggest stage.
Either second-year Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is going to instantly vault himself into Patrick Mahomes’ class of young, revered NFL passers with an early Super Bowl ring and a statement underdog victory.
Or Rams wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. — one of the world’s most famous, talented and recognizable athletes — is going to power his resurrected big-market star into another stratosphere by bookending his famous Giants one-handed catch with a championship in L.A.
Interestingly, the most common sentiment among NFL sources in the City of Angels this week is that Burrow and the Bengals are going to win this.
“I think Burrow’s gonna do it,” one NFL player from another team said, echoing the week’s most common prediction.
There is genuinely more curiosity about how 13-year veteran Matthew Stafford, 34, will play in this big of a game for the Rams than there is about whether Burrow, 25, a second-year pro, will rise to the occasion.
Truly, while there is so much riding on this game in the bigger picture, most of the pressure falls on the Rams, the game’s hosts and four-point favorites.
Will the aggressive team-building strategy of Rams GM Les Snead be vindicated? Will Stafford win the one game Snead acquired him to win (Jared Goff got the Rams here three years ago, after all)?
Can Rams coach Sean McVay be an asset to his team in a Super Bowl rather than a liability? Is McVay actually considering a step away from football to TV after this game?
Many Rams coaches and players are fending off the ghosts of their three-point atrocity in February 2019, a 13-3 Super Bowl LIII loss to the New England Patriots.
The Bengals couldn’t be any looser, appearing in their franchise’s first Super Bowl since 1988.
Their cigar-smoking, modern ‘Joe Cool’ quarterback is just two years removed from a National Championship performance for the ages: 463 yards and five TD passes in a 42-25 decimation of Trevor Lawrence and Clemson.
“I do whatever he tells me to do,” said Bengals star rookie receiver Ja’Marr Chase, Burrow’s top receiver at LSU, too. “He’s like a god to me.”
If the Rams win, there’s a good chance their star-studded pass rush of Aaron Donald, Von Miller and Leonard Floyd will be the reason why. The Bengals’ offensive line has been suspect all season.
The most underrated potential X-factor in Cincinnati’s favor is Staten Island-born defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo.
His defense clamped down on Mahomes’ Chiefs to allow three total points in the second half and overtime of the AFC Championship Game. And it’s not a stretch to think he could out-coach McVay, whose game management has been a liability in each of the last two games.
Bengals pass rusher Trey Hendrickson and safeties Jessie Bates III and Vonn Bell are among the talented defenders who could prey on any mistakes that Stafford and McVay make.
Beckham’s presence might just tip the scales, though.
If Cincinnati plays any man-to-man defense, his former Giants teammate Eli Apple is expected to guard him. And Apple cannot cover Beckham, not in a million years.
OBJ also has been ascending as a difference-maker all playoffs, culminating in a nine-catch, 113-yard performance in the NFC Championship Game win over the 49ers.
“Here I am,” Beckham said, with an opportunity to reach “one of the goals in my life that I always wanted to reach.”
On the eve of the biggest game of Beckham’s life, his partner, Lauren Wood, also was expecting the couple’s first baby any minute. OBJ appeared to reveal that it’s a boy — calling the baby “him” and “he” on Friday. But it’s safe to say this is a week he won’t forget and that he badly wants to finish with a cherry on top.
He is happy in Los Angeles. He wants to win here, and he wants to re-sign here.
“Everybody has told me it’s good to see you win but I see you having fun, that smile that’s on your face, the joy in your heart,” Beckham said. “That means everything to me, because when you’re playing with that joy in your heart, only good things can happen… I’m more comfortable being myself, and being able to be here and just play football.”
Beckham’s midseason signing was only the final piece, though, of Snead’s unique roster-building strategy to capitalize on the Rams’ championship window.
He hasn’t used a first-round pick since 2016 and doesn’t own one until 2024, due to blockbuster trades for players like Stafford and Jalen Ramsey. He acquired Miller this season, too.
The GM’s recognition of what his team is — and isn’t – is impressive and noteworthy in a league where so many franchises struggle to realistically assess themselves. Snead went for it all four years ago and got the Rams to the Super Bowl, where they fell just short.
Now he’s done it again, exploiting an NFL landscape that has several teams in rebuild mode while the Rams are smart enough to know their standing and strike.
“Because those picks are valuable, and because the league’s changed a little bit where teams go into this build phase and they’re willing to part ways maybe with top-tier players,” Snead told the New York Daily News in July, “we’ve determined it’s best at times to maybe use those picks on proven NFL players and take the projection and development part out of the equation.”
McVay, meanwhile, has added an interesting wrinkle to Super Bowl weekend, too.
There have been rumblings the past month that the Rams coach might step away from the game for TV opportunities, specifically if his team had lost early in the postseason, which would have been a colossal disappointment for owner Stan Kroenke.
The Rams are back in the Super Bowl, but on Friday, McVay interestingly left the door open to changes in his near future.
“I don’t really know,” he told reporters of what comes next. “I know I love football and I’m so invested in this thing and I’m in the moment right now. But at some point, too, if you said what do you want to be able to do? I want to be able to have a family and I want to be able to spend time with them.”
All a part of the dramatic buildup to what promises to be a Super Sunday.
