INGLEWOOD — Imagine if plucking daisy petals actually determined your team’s fate: The Rams are Super Bowl contenders. The Rams are not Super Bowl contenders. The Rams are Super Bowl contenders. The Rams are not Super Bowl contenders … they do have what it takes; they don’t.
On a short week against the rival San Francisco 49ers, the Rams didn’t pass the smell test. They are not Super Bowl contenders. Not unless they improve in every phase of play.
Don’t give them their flowers, because they didn’t play at all like contenders in Thursday night’s 26-23 loss to the severely and exceedingly short-handed 49ers (4-1).
The Rams (3-2) looked like they don’t have what it takes, not yet.
Title teams don’t go getting ahead of themselves, don’t keep needing late-game pressure to giddy up, don’t wait for the threat of a 21-point deficit to get going.
They don’t have games where they miss a field goal, miss an extra point and leave an overtime kickoff short of the 20-yard-line landing zone (putting the ball on the 40-yard line for the 49ers, who capitalized – thank you – with the game-winning field goal).
Title teams don’t – subconsciously or otherwise – overlook a team like the Rams did Kyle Shanahan’s banged-up squad.
Title teams don’t lose games like this. They don’t wind up upset after being upset, bent over with their heads down in the locker room, consoling one another or shouting obscenities at the football gods.
They don’t leave their coach second-guessing himself and feeling sick after opting against a game-tying field-goal attempt and going for it on fourth-and-1 at the San Francisco 11, only for running back Kyren Williams to be smothered well short of the first down.
Title teams don’t mess around against a team without many of its best weapons – quarterback Brock Purdy, tight end George Kittle and wide receivers Ricky Pearsall, Jauan Jennings and Jordan Watkins, among them. And they definitely don’t let that team control the game like the 49ers did, executing an exquisite game of keep-away.
Christian McCaffrey did to the Rams what Indianapolis star running back Johnathan Taylor and Philadelphia superstar running back Saquon Barkley could not. He ground down the Rams’ defense with 22 carries (for 57 yards) and eight catches (for 82 and a touchdown).
Quarterback Mac Jones – Purdy’s understudy – got his fellow backups in San Francisco’s receiving corps going too. Kendrick Bourne (10 catches for 142 yards) and tight end Jake Tonges (seven for 41) kept slipping through the Rams’ secondary – to the raucous delight of San Francisco’s typically friendly at-home-on-the-road crowd at SoFi Stadium.
In all, San Francisco ran 19 more plays, chewing the clock slowly, giving the Rams only 26 minutes with the ball compared to the the 49ers’ 40 – and, to start, only three first-half drives (resulting in a Williams touchdown, a fumble and a punt). The Rams headed to halftime down, 17-7.
Going into the second half, Rams coach Sean McVay told the TV audience the plan was simple: “Let’s go get some points!”
But the Rams mustered only 16 more, enough to force overtime but not enough to win.
A title team wouldn’t have let a bunch of backups back them up to the brink to begin with. But there the Rams were, trailing 23-20 with 2:52 left after a 59-yard field goal off the foot of recent signee Eddy Pineiro.
And then 49ers rookie defensive tackle Alfred Collins knocked the ball away from Williams at the goal line and then scooped up the fumble with 1:08 to play, nullifying what should have been the Rams’ go-ahead play and sending the game to overtime.
“Ultimately, it’s my responsibility. We weren’t ready to go,” McVay said in a brief postgame news conference, stinging from the loss but not giving up hope that the Rams can yet turn over a new petal, one that will reveal character more befitting a contender.
“I’m really disappointed while also being excited about being able to use this as an opportunity to be able to respond. Right now it doesn’t feel good,” McVay acknowledged. “This will certainly not make for a great weekend, but it will offer an opportunity for us to continue to show that were made of the right stuff – which I have zero doubt.”