5 reasons Rams are most dangerous wild card team in NFL Playoffs

If you weren't expecting it, Los Angeles Rams We're forgiven for making the playoffs this year, because you can't know what you couldn't know. The Rams have the players they expect coming into the season, but it was unclear how good those players would be after being paired with Sean McVay.

Puka Nacua was the last pick in the fifth round. Sets NFL rookie record for catches and yards in a single season.Or will Kyren Williams, a fifth-round pick a year before Puka, lead the league in rushing yards per game? Or third-round pick Koby Turner could tie Aaron Donald's franchise record for rookie sacks. Competing for Defensive Rookie of the Year? Or cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon, who has bounced around from team to team? Will play like L.A.'s new “Jalen Ramsey”?

These were shocking developments for a team that went 5-12 last season and then had to dismantle its roster, but knowing what we know now, we can't help but think about the 2023 Los Angeles team. There's only one conclusion to draw about the Rams. They're not just a team. wild card team.

They're the last wild card team anyone wants to play against at this point.

Hottest team in the NFL?

The Rams enter the playoffs as the NFC's wild card and No. 6 seed, based on full-season stats, but in the past two months alone, they've played closer to a top-five team. , playing much better than the top five teams. Lions start in mid-November.

Heading into the bye week at 3-6, the Rams look beat up in every way, as most expected after an offseason of cutting corners just to build a team under the salary cap. It looked like. The Rams traded Jalen Ramsey, cut Bobby Wagner, and entered camp with 36 rookies, among other cap-saving measures, but have not acquired a first-round draft pick since Jared Goff in 2016. They used most of that money to create the lowest-cost defense in the NFL. Assigned to one person, Aaron Donald.

A 3-6 record made sense at the time, but coming off the bye week LA looked more like a team that won a Super Bowl than a team that won a Super Bowl. Las Vegas is expected to win 6.5 games..

The Rams have won seven of their last eight games, with their only loss coming in an overtime thriller. baltimore ravens, probably the best team in soccer. The offensive line needed to be rebuilt on the cheap, trading starting running backs in Week 2, starting the season with Cooper Kupp on IR, and having the NFL's oldest starting quarterback on this side of Joe Flacco. The Rams. He was as explosive and dangerous as any scoring threat in the league.

In the final eight games of the regular season, the Rams ranked fourth in scoring behind the Ravens, Cowboys, and Cowboys. 49ers. His point differential at this point is +53, his fifth-highest point differential behind the Cowboys, Ravens, 49ers and Bills.

The Rams and Lions finished tied in EPA on offense and defense.

Perhaps home-field advantage will be the difference for the Lions, but under other circumstances it's safe to say the Lions are the better team, and the one with the Super Bowl-winning coaches and players. LA Rams. This is the type of smoke most district champions don't want in the first round, and it's not what you want if McVay wins against his former quarterback and Stafford wins against his former team deeper into the playoffs. .

Sean McVay's playoff experience

This will be McVay's 11th playoff game despite only becoming head coach seven years ago. How unusual is it for a head coach to make 11 playoff games in seven years? By comparison, Mike Tomlin went to two Super Bowls in his first four years on the job. steelers Even the head coach didn't coach an 11th playoff game until his 10th season.

Ravens head coach John Harbaugh has coached just seven playoff games in the past decade. Even Bill Belichick hasn't coached as many playoff games as McVay since he took over in 2017, during which time he led the Patriots to four postseason appearances and eight playoff games.

In fact, if the Rams make it to the Super Bowl this year, McVay will coach as many playoff games in his first seven seasons as Belichick coached in his first seven seasons with the Patriots, and New England will He won three Super Bowls. time. Of course, that would also mean McVay played in three Super Bowls in his first seven years.

The experience of knowing the difference between coaching a playoff game and the regular season certainly helped McVay from his first outing (when the Rams were promptly eliminated) to his second (when the Rams advanced to the Super Bowl). But now it might be possible. This gives Los Angeles an advantage over the opposing team's first-time playoff coach in Dan Campbell.

Campbell, known for coaching with the heart first and the head second, could be overwhelmed by the gamble of hosting a playoff game in Detroit for the first time in 30 years. Win or lose, Campbell will be in tears Sunday night.

But for McVay, it's another day at the office, as the Rams are 3-0 in their first postseason playoff game since 2018, including an upset in a wild-card road game. This also includes being at a disadvantage. seahawks Goff was the quarterback in 2020. Tampa's Todd Bowles is 0-1 in the playoffs, Green Bay's Matt LaFleur is 2-3, Philadelphia's Nick Sirianni is 2-2, and Kyle Shanahan and Mike McCarthy are 6-3. We have two experienced coaches. , 11-10 years old.

But McVay, who is 7-3 in the playoffs, still has more postseason wins than Campbell, Bowles, LaFleur and Sirianni combined.

Matthew Stafford escapes the pressure of being 'Stat Padford'

The last time Matthew Stafford started a wild card game was in the first 12 years of his career, all with the Lions, who went 0-3 in the playoffs. By the end of the postseason, he turned his winless career into a winning career, going 4-3 and winning the Super Bowl.

Dak Prescott and Brock Purdy may win MVP, Jalen Hurts played in the Super Bowl last year, and Jordan Love is still a developing player, but no one in the NFC playoffs has that much experience and arm talent. , and no quarterback has it all. Stafford is so defeated. He enters the postseason with nothing to prove and everything to gain, but he's probably the last quarterback any team wants to play against right now.

He's proven he can win playoff games, he's proven he can win the Super Bowl.

Not only did Stafford win, but he led the Rams to a last-minute win against Tom Brady's Bucs, produced his fourth quarterback upset over the 49ers in the NFC Championship, and beat Joe Burrow to give Kupp the victory in the Super Bowl. It had to result in a touchdown. .

This is not similar to a player who was thinking about retiring because he could barely pitch. According to an offseason report by Combine's Matthew Berry..

Stafford is arguably playing better now than he did two years ago, when the Rams went 12-5 and won all games. He didn't throw for that many scores, finishing the season with 24 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, and just under 4,000 yards, but the team almost completely overhauled its supporting cast and put Kupp on IR to start games. Increased difficulty. season.

Compared to the Super Bowl offense, all of the offensive linemen are different except right tackle Rob Havenstein, and the skill players around Stafford are almost completely revamped with the exception of Kupp and Tyler Higbee. Puka Nacua and Kyren Williams weren't added to the roster until the last two drafts, the team traded away Cam Akers and Van Jefferson during the season, and then an injury to Williams left McVay in the running for street free agency. We had to rotate the backs.

Kyren Williams ended up leading all running backs with 95.3 rushing yards per game.

The Rams ranked seventh in scoring when they won the Super Bowl, but with a low-budget rebuild of the offense after disastrous additions like last season's Allen Robinson, L.A. will continue to score this year. He was ranked 8th in the rankings. It's an incredible comeback for a guy who “can barely throw.”

he can throw. he can win.

giant killer

For every team in the NFC hoping to make it to the Super Bowl without facing the 49ers, McVay's Rams are ironically labeled as the team best suited to pull off an upset: Season game against the 49ers before the Carson Wentz vs. Sam Darnold game in Week 18, which was unexpected for a team that had lost nine straight.

But there's good reason to doubt McVay will take Kyle Shanahan from the No. 1 seed.First, the Rams were the last team to beat Shanahan in the playoffs. When he wasn't down to the fourth quarterback.

LA defeated San Francisco 20-17 in the 2021 NFC Championship, coming from behind 17-7 in the fourth quarter to win, something Shanahan has seen many times before as a coach. .

And even though many of their key starters were rested, the Rams defeated the 49ers in the final week of the season, more than anything because of McVay's depth and players we don't talk about more than most people think. has also proven to be excellent. But the Rams didn't just beat the 49ers' backups this year.

They defeated the Seattle Seahawks, keeping them out of the playoffs and helping end Pete Carroll's 14-year tenure as head coach. McVay dominated Carroll in the series since 2017, when the Seahawks were good and the Rams were bad. The Rams defeated the Colts in Indy, but if they had won already, they would have made the playoffs.Rams won browns 36-19. And they defeated the Saints, another team that would have made the playoffs had they not lost to LA, 30-22.

But perhaps the most memorable game of the season was the loss. The Rams traveled to Baltimore in Week 10 at 10 a.m. local time to take the Ravens to overtime. The Ravens, a Baltimore team that has defeated the Lions 38-6, the Seahawks 37-3, and the Bengals 34-20 in their past three home games, needed a miraculous overtime punt return touchdown (McVay's biggest His weakness was that he was on special teams). Rams.

So whether it's the Lions, 49ers, Cowboys or Eagles. Or RavensIt seems like no NFL playoff team wants to play the Rams right now.

They smell dangerous.