Nine years ago today, the Rams hired coach Sean McVay. (He still isn’t 40.) In six days, he’ll coach his 15th career postseason game.
And here’s a nutty stat, as noted by John Breech of CBS Sports. McVay’s 15th career playoff game will happen against his 15th different playoff opponent.
Here they are: Falcons (2017), Cowboys (2018), Saints (2018), Patriots (2018), Seahawks (2020), Packers (2020), Cardinals (2021), Buccaneers (2021), 49ers (2021), Bengals (2021), Lions (2023), Vikings (2024), Eagles (2024), Panthers (2025), Bears (2025).
The only NFC teams McVay hasn’t faced in the playoffs are the Commanders and Giants.
If the Rams win on Sunday at Soldier Field, McVay will have his first career repeat postseason opponent, in the Seahawks or the 49ers.
Maybe the Rams will be moving back to St. Louis.
I’m kidding. (I think.) For now, the recent 10-year anniversary of the return of the Rams to L.A. has been undermined by a legal battle between team owner Stan Kroenke and the City of Inglewood.
As explained by Bloomberg.com, the fight began over the city’s placement of billboards in and around the vicinity of SoFi Stadium. After Kroenke and company lost that round, the battle morphed into a claim that Inglewood owes Kroenke $400 million spent on road, sewers, other infrastructure, and police and fire protection. The city claims there is no binding agreement requiring any such amounts to be paid.
At first blush, it feels like a spite lawsuit, something Kroenke cooked up after he lost the billboard case. Which is what the ultra-rich tend to do when they don’t get their way, happily paying hourly legal fees in the name of proving a point.
Kroenke moved the Rams to the privately-financed stadium in California from Missouri, sparking litigation that ultimately resulted in the Rams and the rest of the NFL paying $790 million to settle the claims.
For now, Kroenke and Inglewood have no choice but to find a way to coexist. Unless Kroenke plans to sell the stadium and surrounding developments to the Chargers or someone else, he won’t be pulling up the stakes and leaving town.
Again.
When the Rams and the Bears get together in the postseason for the first time since the 1985 NFC Championship, it will be cold in Chicago. As it usually is there in January. And it will be windy in Chicago. As it almost always is there.
Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford has no qualms about his team’s next assignment.
“I think as far as the wind goes, you’re right, it is always windy in Chicago,” Stafford told Jim Gray on the latest episode of the Let’s Go! podcast. “I played a handful of games there throughout the years. The good thing for us is it was windy this past week in Carolina. I think every kickoff, it seemed like somebody had to come out and hold it. It was getting blown off the tee, blown off the tee, blown off the tee. We’ve dealt with that before.
“And then when it goes to cold weather, we played the Jets last year in what was, I think it was like 12 degrees at kickoff. And you just adjust to whatever the weather allows you to do. And I think if it’s just cold with a little bit of wind, we go play. You know, I love that kind of stuff. I mean, that’s playoff football, right? Cold weather in Chicago, windy day, there’s nothing better than that in my mind, so I’m excited for it.”
The current forecast calls for a high of 21 and a low of eight on Sunday in Chicago. The kickoff time (3:00 p.m. ET or 6:30 p.m. ET) has not yet been set.
For Stafford, his injured finger is another potential issue, when it comes to gripping a cold football. He downplayed that factor.
He up-played the overall significance of playing a playoff game in Chicago.
“I mean, I sit there and I think to myself, I was a kid once playing football in the backyard, throwing the ball up against a tree or into the fence, just thinking about, ‘Man, what if I was doing this someday in a playoffs in Chicago against the Bears?’” Stafford said. “I mean, there’s so much nostalgia in this game and so much reverence I have for the people who played before and all that. Just, hey, enjoy this, right? Let’s go prepare like we know how to prepare and let’s go cut it loose on Sunday and enjoy the opportunity to play together. We have such a great group, both coaches and players. We love coming to work and finding ways to get better, finding ways to win football games, doing all the things that you have to do. Let’s go earn the right to continue to work together.”
It’s one thing to say it from L.A. It’s another thing to deal with the cold and the wind. And while it may not affect Stafford (does anything affect him?), other players on the Rams may find those conditions to be challenging.
Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford isn’t sweating the prospect of his right finger injury impacting his performance this week.
Stafford remained in Saturday’s win over the Panthers after suffering the injury and said on Lets Go! Monday that he doesn’t “see there being any kind of an issue for me” against the Bears
“Hand is good. I’m not worried about it at all,” Stafford said. “I was just throwing a ball over the middle to Puka [Nacua] and caught somebody’s forearm. Just bent it way back. I just was looking down a little bit, like what’s this thing gonna look like when I go down there and look at it? But it was fine, a little bit stiff throughout the game, like a jammed finger. But I know by Sunday next week I’ll be feeling great.”
Stafford was 24-of-42 for 304 yards, three touchdowns and one interception against Carolina. He threw for 457 yards and three touchdowns in the Rams’ loss at the Seahawks during the regular season.
The NFL has picked the days, but not the times or the networks, for next weekend’s playoff games. The final decisions will be made after tonight’s Texans-Steelers game.
The obvious question is why?
The most logical answer is that, if the Steelers win, the league will schedule Steelers-Patriots for the 6:30 p.m. ET slot on Sunday and that, if the Texans win, Rams-Bears will be played later.
While that doesn’t explain the decision to not attach a time or a network to the Saturday games, it’s possible that the league wants to have one AFC game at night and the other in the afternoon. It’s also possible that the league realizes the failure to assign times for the Sunday games would become more glaring if the league sets times for the Saturday games.
The league has access to all of the data, with projections as to which games will draw the biggest numbers. And it’s the league’s prerogative to wait until all eight teams are set to decide when the teams will play.
The winner of the Texans-Steelers game should be hoping for the 6:30 p.m. ET slot on Sunday, because every hour (and every minute) counts when operating on a short week. Especially for the Texans, who’d have to travel home and later make the trip to New England.
However it plays out, we’ll likely find out as soon as the Monday night game ends.
