Blowout Loss Makes Rams’ Difficult Super Bowl Task Even Tougher

Divisional Context

If the Rams lose big against a random AFC team in Australia due in part to travel and sleep experimentation, it’s harmful but has limited impact on their road to the NFC’s top seed or the Super Bowl. Here, however, they’re already put behind the eight ball because it was a divisional game.

By losing this “home” game to the Niners, L.A. now has to win on the road to make up that ground and equalize that head-to-head tiebreaker. The Rams are no strangers to winning up at Levi’s Stadium. They beat San Francisco there just last year, in a relatively one-sided 42-26 romp. And also won the previous two games in Santa Clara as well. But big losses create narratives to overcome, especially when favored to win the way Los Angeles was going into this season.

To make matters worse for the Rams, the Seahawks also took care of business on Wednesday night to kick off the season, despite losing Sam Darnold to an injury early in the first quarter.

Much like the Rams, Seattle’s offense sputtered early. But unlike L.A., its defense came through to secure the win against the Patriots despite running a paired-down offense with backup Drew Lock at the helm.

And now that Darnold’s injury appears to be less serious than original thought, the Seahawks hold a one-game lead on the Rams already with the teams potentially poised to battle it out (with the 49ers as well) for the NFC West crown and more this year.

Larger Alarm Bells

Disrupted sleep or not, one of the most alarming aspects of the Rams’ outing against the 49ers was how little the revamped defense was able to stop the 49ers’ offensive attack.

For a team that spent the offseason improving the defensive side of the ball, it was glaring how little resistance they had for a San Francisco group that was missing key players to start, and even lost a couple over the course of the game (with injuries to both De’Zhaun Stribling and Jake Tonges).

L.A. had just one tackle for loss and two quarterback hits while allowing 5.8 yards per carry to a combination of Christian McCaffrey, Keaton Black, QB Brock Purdy and Deebo Samuel. Coming off winning last year’s defensive player of the year award and setting the single-season sack record, Garrett failed to record a single defensive stat despite playing 40 snaps (out of 64).

On the other side of the ball, the Rams had less than 300 yards of total offense, Matthew Stafford was not overly accurate (15-of-25) and he was constantly under siege with eight QB hits. The run game, while effective at times in the first half mostly behind Blake Corum, was not a major factor.

Superteam Pressure

ESPN’s Bill Barnwell did not paint an overly optimistic picture for the Rams’ Super Bowl prospects as a superteam given the history of those proclaimed “all-star” squads (here, he looked at teams with significantly better championship odds than the rest of the league).

Since 1990, the vast majority of these overwhelming favorites failed to win it all – including, famously, the 2007 Patriots team that finished the regular season undefeated. But some did pull it off, including the 1994 49ers and 2018 Patriots.

The Rams’ own superteam history this century hasn’t fared too well, either. The 2001 team was the last gasp for the “Greatest Show on Turf” era. And while heavily favored in the Super Bowl, that group was upset by the Patriots in the game that started the NFL’s Tom Brady era. In 2002, the then-St. Louis Rams were similarly heavy preseason favorites, but missed the postseason entirely.

That early 2000s media environment is not today’s, though. And the Rams hype this season as a team in the country’s second-largest media market far outweighs what was going on for the team while in St. Louis. Which could impact the team if they get off to a difficult start with road games against the Broncos and Eagles still to come in September.