LA Rams Championship After All These Years – Orange County Register

INGLEWOOD – When Aaron Donald left the field on Sunday night, after harassing Joe Burrow in a last-minute unfinished final and ultimately burying the Cincinnati Bengals’ chance-less championship hopes, he patted his wrist as if gesturing his watch.

Implications? Select one. It’s time. Or about time.

Either way, what the Rams have done in the end adding their name to LA’s roster of championship teams may not yet resonate with Greater LA. But it certainly has with a fan base that has grown over their six seasons back in LA and promises to grow even more, thanks to the attention two weeks ago and especially the results on Sunday night. , when another fourth-quarter return by Matthew Stafford yielded the Rams a 23-20 win and the franchise’s second overall and first Lombardi Trophy title in Los Angeles.

(And for those watching for the week, owner Stan Kroenke took the highway in celebration, allowing only the SoFi Stadium, his $5.5 billion project, to turn into That’s an understatement.If you don’t count the traffic and parking, which is even messier on Super Bowl Sunday than the rest of the week, this state-of-the-art stadium is a hit with league representatives here that you can bet it’ll go back to the Super Bowl rotation as soon as possible.)

It’s all blueprints, even if it was delayed a year after weather problems halted construction. The stadium is said to be a showcase worthy of the country’s second-largest market. And once it was understood that Super Bowl LVI would be here, building the Rams’ roster seemed like a task from above. They have to make sure they’re going to be that first SoFi Super Bowl participant.

And it was like that. The Rams have become the second team in a row to win the Super Bowl in their own building, though Bengal’s fans may not be outnumbered, but certainly outnumbered. (Technically, it’s a neutral site.) And they did so with the grit and tenacity that have characterized this team for much of the past few weeks, especially after a string of faltering games. ruthless early in the second half threatened to derail it all.

The Rams lead 13-10 after halftime. In the 10 innings and 4:45 of the third round, they led 20-13, a streak that included a 75-yard scoring pass from Joe Burrow to Tee Higgins, on which Jalen Ramsey fell (possibly with the Higgins’ help) and Stafford threw an interception that bounced in and out of rookie Ben Skowronek’s hands the next round.

In the end, Stafford made up for that by designing a 4th-half drive that lasted 15 innings, consumed nearly five minutes, and put the Rams in the lead with 1:35 left when he found Kupp in the end area.

It was fitting that Stafford’s latest game-winning record contributed to the championship, given the anticipation when the Rams rescued him from a devastating situation in Detroit last January. And it was even more appropriate for Donald to help close the deal, as the team-wide theme leading up to this game was making sure that the NFL’s best defensive player finally got the championship passed him over. and the Rams three years ago in Atlanta.

“This team is a mentally tough team like I’ve been on,” said Eric Weddle, who retired to call defensive signals over a five-week period and contributed five tackles on the road. to his first championship in 15 seasons as a pro.

“And to be able to have the fun of a game over the last five weeks, you know, the games we’ve been in are pretty wild and crazy. But we have never wavered and we have never stopped believing. And it started with our head coach (Sean McVay) and the leaders of this team, with a ‘just play it once’ mindset and always present in this moment, especially for the adults. older than us. We know how hard it is to get here, right? This is my first time, and it took me 15 years to get here. So we just don’t want to miss this opportunity or do whatever you can to take advantage of it.

“And,” he added, “we definitely did.”

If people like Weddle and Donald feel like they have an endless wait, what about all those old school Rams fans who signed the petition and stared at the Facebook pages and believed they will probably team back from St. Louis, even if few others believe.

If they are of a certain age, they will surely recall all the grief over the years. They grieve that the Foursome Foursome, the great defense featuring Hall of Famers Deacon Jones and Merlin Olsen, never won a championship. They remember the 1974 NFC championship game in Minnesota when Hall of Fame guard Tom Mack was called up for mishandling the “1-yard line” – and anyone who has seen the play knows that Mack never moved.

They remembered all that loss in that icy December of Minnesota, and the last year they caught the Vikings at home only to have it rain so much that the Colosseum turned into a quagmire. They remember the first Super Bowl, at the Rose Bowl against Pittsburgh, when Nolan Cromwell had what should have been able to safely intercept the game but couldn’t hold it. They remember the ’80s teams that kept going to the top and getting pushed back, and they remember the ghost bag that changed the perception of Jim Everett’s career against the 49ers during the 1989 season.