Super challenge: Rams open title defense vs. Bills

For nearly seven months, Sean Mcvay has told the Los Angeles Rams their Super Bowl championship guarantees them nothing in this new season except a banner.

“It feels like it was a long time ago,” said Mcvay, the youngest coach in NFL history to win it all. “It’s one that I’ll always cherish, but I think if you live in the past, you’re going to get exposed in the present. So we’re not going to do that.”

The Rams will unveil that banner Thursday night at Sofi Stadium before they get another reminder of just how little their championship victory on that same field last winter will mean this fall.

The NFL chose Von Miller and the powerhouse Buffalo Bills as the Rams’ opponent in their season opener, practically ensuring a difficult start to a season in which they’re widely perceived to have the league’s toughest schedule. The Rams know they’ll get every opponent’s best shot this year, starting with a visit from a team holding serious championship aspirations of its own.

“Going in to play the defending Super Bowl champs and watching them raise their banner, that’ll be an interesting feeling, for sure,” Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen said. “I’ve talked to a few people that have played and coached in this game before, and just really the unanimous thing that they were talking about was it feels like playoff atmosphere.”

The Rams are Vegas underdogs in their first game since winning their franchise’s second Super Bowl title. In fact, the Bills could send Los Angeles to a place it has never been with Mcvay — below .500.

The Rams have never lost a season opener or had a losing record at any point in the tenure of Mcvay, who took over in 2017 and immediately built a perennial winner with general manager Les Snead.

Sean Mcdermott got his job in Buffalo one week before Mcvay, and the stillyoung coaches already have the sixth- and seventh-longest tenures in the league. But while Mcvay got the ultimate validation last season, Mcdermott is hoping this will be the year for the Bills’ first Super Bowl trip since the 1993 season.

The Rams already did it all in a season filled with superlatives, including the spectacular statistical campaign by Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp.

“The question we’re always trying to answer is, how can 2022 be better for the LA Rams?” Kupp said. “What can we do better? Who can we put on the field to stack blocks and build on this thing? Feels good to be back playing a meaningful game.”