Rams’ hope cinematic saga has happy ending
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — When the Los Angeles Rams raise the Vince Lombardi Trophy at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, the moment might feel almost cliched.
Winning the Super Bowl in your palatial home stadium as the culmination to a six-year saga of franchise relocation, innumerable setbacks and steady growth into a champion? Sounds like the Hollywood ending to an inspirational sports flick.
No hacky screenwriter came up with this final act, however. The Rams wrote this script themselves.
With hard work, bold personnel moves, tremendous resilience and a little bit of luck, they’ve earned this big finish when they win the Super Bowl for the first time as the Los Angeles Rams, giving their city its first NFL championship team in 38 years.
“We came a long way to get here, and there’s been a lot of hard work that people don’t see,” NFL receiving kingpin Cooper Kupp said. “We feel like we’ve earned the right to be here the hard way. Nothing was given to us just because the Super Bowl is at SoFi (Stadium).”
Destiny doesn’t win sports trophies. The team that has the best players and that plays the best almost always does.
And while the Rams might feel like a team of destiny in this situation because of the Super Bowl’s location, their homecoming saga, their many stars and the price they paid to assemble them, one fact looms largest.
They’re just plain better than the Cincinnati Bengals.
It starts not in the backfields, but up front. Don’t get distracted by the Rams’ flashy playmakers on both sides of the ball, because they should also win their competition with Cincinnati in the trenches.
The Rams’ defensive line and edge rushers are markedly superior to the Bengals’ offensive line, and that mismatch should play havoc with everything Joe Burrow tries to do.
Burrow won’t find it as easy to work game-changing magic when Aaron Donald, Von Miller and Leonard Floyd are either bearing down on him for sacks or forcing him to throw the ball so quickly that Cincinnati can only count on short routes. Even the Rams’ run defense seems stacked to stop productive running back Joe Mixon, particularly if top run defender Sebastian Joseph-Day returns from his long-term injury and bolsters the line as expected.
The Rams’ offensive line has been quietly solid all season long, and it should provide plenty of time for Matthew Stafford to find targets in the Bengals’ inconsistent pass defense. The likely return of Darrell Henderson from long-term injury also gives Los Angeles three healthy, playmaking running backs for the first time all season, multiplying Sean McVay’s playcalling options.
“If we have all of our guys, we can do a lot of things because that’s a lot of playmakers,” Stafford said. “We haven’t been completely healthy since we lost Robert (Woods), but hopefully we should have enough guys to get it done.”
Stafford and the Rams’ stars know it’s time to shine, and they have superior playmakers at most of the important spots on the field.