Los Angeles Rams try to claim title in their moment
The New England Patriots are already set for history. Nobody is going to think any less of the Patriots should they lose the Super Bowl on Sunday. For Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, they already have a hand full of rings, with their legacies as the greatest to ever do this fully secure.
For the Los Angeles Rams, things aren’t as sewn up. In fact, they aren’t sewn up at all.
Sean McVay is a coaching genius. At 33 years old, he appears to be the next great head coach who is getting everyone a job just for knowing him. In his two years with the Los Angeles Rams, he took a perennial loser and a broken quarterback and fixed them both. He won a pair of division titles and now, he’s reached Super Sunday. It’s all been a dream.
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Of course, the dream can quickly turn into a nightmare. There have been other geniuses before who got to the big game and then lost. They were promised a return but never did make it back.
Need an example? Look at the last time the Rams went to the Super Bowl. Mike Martz had taken over the team for Dick Vermeil after they won the Super Bowl in St. Louis in 1999, and Martz was thought to be an offensive guru from heaven. The Rams smoked everybody in 2001, rolling to a 14-2 mark before meeting the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI as a 14-point favorite. They lost. Martz never recovered.
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Now, none of this is to suggest that Martz and McVay are the same coach, or even similar in style. What it does is illustrate the point that narratives shift and time is fleeting. The Rams loaded up this roster with the expectation of winning now before Jared Goff becomes insanely expensive on his second contract. That’s why general manager Les Snead went for broke this offseason, trading for Marcus Peters, Brandin Cooks and Aqib Talib before signing Ndamukong Suh and applying the franchise tag to LaMarcus Joyner. Then, at the trade deadline in October, Snead acquired Dante Fowler Jr.
Make no mistake. This is the all-in moment for the Los Angeles Rams. Suh and Talib are gone after this year, with Fowler and Joyner also likely out the door with them. The Rams are trying to go for the ring right now, and McVay is the mad scientist leading the charge.
While there’s nothing saying the Rams can’t make it back at a later date with a different iteration of this team, there’s also nothing guaranteeing it.
The time is now.
