GLENDALE, Ariz. — First, the Rams played for their city.
Now, they’re playing for their pride.
The Rams staged an incredibly uplifting win Monday night, among the greatest in franchise history, when they beat the 14-win Minnesota Vikings in the NFL’s first relocated playoff game.
The NFC wild-card game was moved to Arizona because of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, and the host Arizona Cardinals took great pains to make their home look like SoFi Stadium.
“Perfect,” was the way NFL commissioner Roger Goodell summed up the remarkable effort to move and stage the event on such short notice. He attended the game with his wife and daughters.
“I hope we made L.A. proud for a few moments after all they’ve been through,” Goodell said in a post-game email to the Los Angeles Times.
Now, the pride part. The Rams will play at Philadelphia on Sunday in a divisional game, and the Eagles embarrassed them at home, 37-20, in Week 12.
The Rams defense, which was smothering Monday night and collected an NFL postseason record with nine sacks, was trampled by Saquon Barkley in that game. The Eagles back ran for 255 yards and had an astounding yardage total of 302.
“There’s no excuse for 250 rush yards or whatever the amount ended up being,” Rams rookie defensive tackle Braden Fiske said after Monday’s game. “But we know what we’re getting into this week and we’re going to be ready.”
The Rams have the NFL’s fourth-youngest defense, and one that endured its share of growing pains this season. In the last four games in which the starters played, however, the team surrendered six, nine, nine and nine points.
“We’ve grown so much from that game,” Rams defensive end Kobie Turner said, referring to the Philadelphia debacle. “I’m excited to put out the ways that we’ve grown, and to be able to put on a show.”
The team certainly did that Monday night, leaving no doubt from the start that they were ready to roll. They met the moment, and any butterflies they might have had fluttered away when seasoned quarterback Matthew Stafford completed his first 10 passes. Rookie outside linebacker Jared Verse scooped up a fumble and scored a 57-yard touchdown.
Before they knew it, the vaunted Vikings were down, 27-3.
Nearly 2,000 Rams fans rode six hours to the game from Los Angeles on buses provided by the team and the Stafford family.
“It was unbelievable, the crowd that showed out for us tonight,” Fiske said.
“It’s a tragedy what’s going on in Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s affected guys on our own team’s homes. There are so many people out there who have lost everything. So it’s a big driving force for this team, and we take a lot of pride in putting the city on our back and representing Los Angeles.”
It wasn’t just the players who came to Arizona last Friday to prepare for the game, but their families too. And, in some cases, their pets — six dogs and two cats, to be exact. The Cardinals provided two Boeing 777 jets to transport nearly 400 people.
The experience felt something like training camp to the players, and some believe that closeness has had a galvanizing effect on the team.
“When you play football in college, a lot of times it feels like the families know each other,” Rams receiver Cooper Kupp said. “People are connected and they grow up together. In college you spend four years together and you get to know the families, the brothers and sisters.
“In the NFL that doesn’t happen. There’s so much movement. You go to work, and you go home. You see the guys in the locker room, but you don’t meet the families. But when something like this happens it gives us the opportunity to get our families together.
“I’m sitting there at breakfast in the morning, and I’ve got kids and parents, brothers and sisters of all my teammates around. There’s a unity that’s created, and that’s a really powerful thing.”
Without question, these Rams are bonded in a way that a lot of other NFL teams are not. Time will tell if that makes a difference in how far they advance.
What we do know is teams evolve and grow over the course of a season, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. For instance, the Rams were crushed in a Week 2 game at Arizona, 41-10, yet came back to beat the Cardinals in Week 17, 13-9. The latter was a far more mature and seasoned Rams team.
The Rams are hoping they can make the same kind of strides against Philadelphia.
“This being a short week, we’re looking forward to getting right back in the building and hitting the reset button and running it right back,” Turner said. “We’re excited for this one.”
