INGLEWOOD – When it reigns …
With their thrilling Game 7 victory in Toronto on Saturday night, the Dodgers delivered two rings in two seasons and I know you, L.A., I know you want more. I know you want to pour it on.
Guess what? So do the Rams, who walked off the SoFi Stadium field Sunday to Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” after their inspired and suspense-free 34-10 victory over the New Orleans Saints (1-8).
And the Rams happen to have the credentials to make you believe in their championship potential.
They’ve got a championship quarterback playing MVP-caliber football in his 17th NFL season, in Matthew Stafford.
They’ve got arguably the best receiver in the league, and the toughest, in Puka Nacua.
They’ve got one of the NFL’s scariest defenses, a unit that’s given up just 20 points combined in the past three games.
And yes, they’ve got championship head coach Sean McVay.
The master motivator is capable not only of scheming with the best of them, but he’s someone who’s capable of tapping into the zeitgeist of the present moment, taking that championship charge that energized L.A. on Saturday night and plugging it into his own team – several of whom celebrated big plays Sunday by doing the Freddie Freeman dance that the Dodgers do after extra-base hits.
“You’re inspired when you watch the way they competed, the way they overcame some adversity,” McVay said of the Dodgers, who won two tough games against the Blue Jays to overcome a 3-2 deficit in the best-of-seven series.
“Just the culture they have, when you listen to the way those players talk about one another, the way that Dave Roberts has really found guys that play for each other – they stay connected, they stay in the moment, and they inspire me. And I know they inspire our group.
“So hopefully we can continue to represent the city the way the Dodgers did.”
The Rams – 6-2 and in first place in the NFC West – also won a title not too long ago, capping the 2021 season by winning Super Bowl LVI on their own SoFi turf.
As of Halloween, they have the sixth-shortest odds – 10-1 – to win it again, tied with the Indianapolis Colts, who they defeated 27-20 on Sept. 28.
For what it’s worth, the Rams’ odds coming into the season were 20-1.
What can you say? Things are trending in the right direction in L.A.
“Watching them … get that win, bring that World Series back to L.A., it gets us hyped,” said Jared Verse, the Rams’ standout linebacker. “Because we know we gotta be next!”
Wearing a backward Dodgers ballcap, Stafford described the Rams’ reaction to Miguel Rojas’ game-tying home run in the ninth inning as resembling everyone else’s in and around L.A.
“We were in the meeting room last night, everybody watching and,” Stafford paused, chuckling, “when Rojas hit the dinger, man, we were all going crazy…
“So happy for them, so proud of them, it’s awesome,” said Stafford, who watched his childhood pal Clayton Kershaw close out his illustrious major league pitching career with a third title.
“A ton of pressure on them coming in the beginning of the season and, man, that’s not an easy thing to play with the entire season. I thought they did a hell of a job. [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto was unbelievable in the series, and really, the whole team had clutch performances, from a bunch of different guys.
“That’s what it takes to win.”
And the way they’re trending, the Rams could be next. Because they also have a bunch of guys.
“We’ve really stacked two good weeks together,” McVay said. “There’s a lot of stuff we can build on and, man, there’s a lot of stuff that we can clean up – which is what’s encouraging. Because we’re gonna need to continuously improve.”
They spent all of Sunday looking like they were running downhill, wind at their backs. Stafford – 281 yards and four touchdowns through the air – diced up the Saints defense so deftly it looked much of the time like a knife through butter would’ve encountered more resistance.
Locked in from the beginning, Stafford’s opening statement went like this: 8 for 8 on the Rams’ first drive.
He spread passes to five players – including Nacua, who jumped right back in the fray after returning from an ankle injury with four of his seven catches on that first drive. He’d also haul in a perfectly placed 39-yard touchdown before leaving the game with a chest injury that kept him out of the game, though not off of the sideline in the second half.
The Rams’ elite pass rush also welcomed the Saints’ first-time starter, Tyler Shough, to the NFL by holding him to 15 of 24 passing and 176 yards.
But not everything was perfect, of course. Nacua’s health status will forever loom large. And the Rams’ kicking operation is what the bullpen was to the Dodgers – a momentum-killing liability.
Kicker Joshua Karty’s badly missed 39-yard field goal was his fifth miss or blocked kick of the season to go with three unsuccessful extra points. “The truth of it is this is not sustainable to continuously go where we want to go.”
Which is, of course, where the Dodgers are: On top at the end.