Some pathetic, frontrunning dorks are fans of the Rams. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Rams. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Los Angeles Rams.
Your 2025 record: 12-5. Heh. Haha. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
The Rams had a GREAT season last year. It was so good, you guys! They had the best offense in the league by a mile, the fourth-best defense by DVOA, and a special teams unit that was [FILE NOT FOUND]. They had the league MVP throwing to arguably the best wide receiver in the game, with plays called by the best offensive coach in the game. All of this was good enough to make them the second-best team in their division.
The Rams were SO CLOSE to winning the NFC West, getting a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, and being served up a birthday cake of a Patriots team in the Super Bowl—only for the division-rival Seahawks to snatch all of that away from them and win the championship. Those seven weeks are collectively the most delighted I have ever been as a Seahawks fan. A Super Bowl win may be the mountaintop, but I am a hater first and foremost, and the combined late-season failures of the Rams and 49ers will keep my wicked black heart pumping poison long after my brain dies.
Friends, I’m about to tell you all about how the Rams faceplanted, and I am GIDDY. I get to live it all again.
Let’s hit the early L’s quickly so I can get to the good stuff:
- Week 3: The 2-0 Rams went up on the Eagles 26-7 in the third quarter, then the rest of their possessions went: punt, turnover on downs, blocked field goal, blocked (would-be game-winning) field goal returned for touchdown. They lost 33-26. Incredible. No notes.
- Week 5: The Rams managed to lose at home to the 49ers, who were without Brock Purdy, Nick Bosa, George Kittle, and their top three wideouts. Let me put that another way: The Rams lost to Mac Jones. It could have gone the Rams’ way in overtime, but an unimaginative Kyren Williams run up the middle on fourth-and-1 got stuffed. Gosh, if only the Rams were coached by an offensive genius who could have called a better play.
- Week 13: Matt Stafford faced off against his nemesis (rain) and lost, throwing two picks (one of which was returned for a TD) and also fumbling on a strip-sack that sealed a home win for the Panthers. I haven’t seen a dominant opponent so susceptible to water since Signs.
OK, now the good stuff. Week 16: Thursday Night Football in Seattle, with both teams boasting 11-3 records. The story going into the game was that the Rams were in Sam Darnold’s head: A year earlier, they had terrorized him in a Wild Card romp that became Darnold’s last game as a Viking, and in Week 11 Darnold sank a heroic effort by the Seahawks defense by throwing four picks in a 21-19 loss.
For three quarters, that narrative played out: Darnold threw two interceptions, one returned to the Seahawks’ 1-yard line, the other into the hands of DE Kobie Turner on the Rams’ 1-yard line. With a little over eight minutes to play, the Rams led 30-14.
Then Rashid Shaheed returned a punt for a touchdown, and the Seahawks made the two-point conversion. That was followed by a Rams three-and-out and a Seattle quick-strike TD that, with Zach Charbonnet’s controversial two-point conversion (see above), tied the game at 30 with 6:53 remaining.
That’s right: The Rams would get THREE more possessions with a chance to retake the lead in regulation. They went: three-and-out, missed field goal, and another punt. In overtime, Puka Nacua’s 41-yard TD was answered by Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who’s as talented as Nacua but not a radioactive asshole. Darnold then sealed the game with another two-point conversion, this time to backup TE Eric Saubert, his fifth read on the play. 38-37, Seahawks.
After the game, Sean McVay cried so hard he pooped his diaper over the failed two-point conversion that was overturned. The Rams responded by proposing rule changes—plural!—that would keep such a fluke from happening again, which is the sorriest loser shit an NFL team can do during the offseason. They withdrew the proposals when it became clear that nobody else gave a shit, and team president Kevin Demoff took his sour grapes to X: the wah-vrything app.
“Withdrawn but not forgotten.” Jesus Christ. Closing the book on the grievance cycle by quote-tweeting a Front Office Sports reporter. What a display of executive leadership. Look at this stuffed shirt:
That’s the kind of face that makes hands instinctively clench into fists. Kevin Demoff couldn’t lead me to Dairy Queen.
Anyway, I don’t know what to say to the parade of crying Rams, except: Maybe coach your players to always pick up the ball. Maybe have a special teams unit that can tackle kick returners or kick a game-winning field goal. Maybe stop one of those other two-point conversions. Or hear me out: Maybe—just MAYBE—a collection of bad breaks is not bad luck, but sloppiness at the edges of the game that can hand victory to a more focused team. Who can say? SCOREBOARD, SUCKAS!
The Rams’ season, of course, was not over at this point. They responded to the Seahawks loss by taking an 11-day mini-bye and going on the road to Atlanta, where a Matt Stafford pick-six and a Bijan Robinson 93-yard touchdown helped put the Rams down 21-0 at halftime; a second-half comeback fell short, and the Rams fell to 2-2 against the NFC South. Dude, the CARDINALS went 2-2 against the NFC South! They won three games ALL YEAR!
Still, the Rams secured the five-seed, which sent them back on the road for a Wild Card game against the Panthers, which they were able to eke out 34-31 because it didn’t rain. In the divisional round, they felled the Bears 20-17 in overtime, overcoming another playoff nemesis—cold weather—as well as this all-timer from Caleb Williams to tie the game:
Yes, it was an incredible throw, but a true hater (me) will note the baffling misplay by No. 14, Cobie Durant. You know, I’ve been so caught up in the Rams’ special teams sucking ass that I’ve yet to point out how much their cornerbacks sucked last year (just like they did in 2024, before the team ignored the need in the offseason).
That brought the Rams back to Seattle for the NFC Championship Game. The Seahawks were fresh off a bye and a 41-6 beatdown of the 49ers in which Seattle rested their starters for most of the fourth quarter. The Rams, meanwhile, had consecutive weekends in the Eastern and Central time zones, with a bonus overtime slog in freezing weather. Perhaps that’s why there’s no “almost” to this Rams loss: The Seahawks scored a touchdown on their opening drive and led for the rest of the game, with the exception of 1:35 near the end of the first half. Stafford was brilliant, but the Rams muffed a punt early in the third quarter that set up an immediate Jake Bobo touchdown, putting Seattle up two scores. The Rams could only chase the rest of the way, losing 31-27.
Is three games a lot of games for your special teams to lose you in one season? Asking for my shit-hearted enemy.
Your coach: Uh oh, the overbearing manager at Best Buy touched the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Sean McVay may well indeed be an offensive genius, but his intellect is nothing compared to his ego.
I elided it above, but the Rams DID have a chance to take the lead late in the NFC Championship Game: Down 31-27, they made it to the 6-yard line with 5:45 left in the game. On fourth-and-4, Stafford’s first read was to Williams, who had leaked out the left side—it was essentially the same route that produced a Williams touchdown catch in the second quarter. Williams had two steps on safety Julian Love, but Seahawks edge DeMarcus Lawrence read the play and stepped into coverage, forcing Stafford into his progressions and resulting in a pass breakup by Devon Witherspoon.
After the game, McVay called Lawrence’s read “a fortuitous bust” by the defense, which later prompted Lawrence to say, essentially, Not only have I been playing against Stafford for 12 years, but I saw Williams score on this concept earlier in the game, so I made snap the decision to cover the running back. (Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald noted recently that Lawrence has a tendency to make decisions outside the play design, calling it “Law logic.”)
This is McVay’s weakness in a nutshell. He KNOWS the defensive concepts that will be thrown at his offense, and so he has drawn up the correct play to defeat that concept. It is chess. He moves the pieces. But when the pieces move in unpredictable ways, he short-circuits. That pawn made a mistake: It went against what the grandmaster had intended. For McVay, the game is not about the players making plays; it’s about McVay calling them.
So when Lawrence drew upon his experience—more than a decade in the pros, but also a scoring play earlier in that very game—to disrupt McVay’s planned outcome, this 40-year-old man was incapable of saying something like “Great read by the defender,” because that would mean admitting a lowly player had bested him in a battle of wits. If you beat him—and it’s him, not the Rams—it can only be a lucky mistake. Christ, what an asshole.
Here’s McVay micromanaging the 17-year pro and future Hall of Famer who executes his offense:
Do you have any idea what it takes to make Matt Stafford exasperated? That man has the patience of Job—I’ve heard his wife’s podcast.
Other notables on the coaching staff:
- Defensive coordinator Chris Shula will be a head coach next year on the strength of his play-calling (yelling “GO!” at the snap).
- Bubba Ventrone was hired away from the Browns to coach special teams. As a player, Ventrone was an undrafted, undersized safety from Villanova who got a chance in the NFL thanks to the Patriots. It may shock you to learn this, but Bill Belichick once raved about his toughness and work ethic four weeks before cutting him.
- Kliff Kingsbury is the assistant head coach for some reason. Maybe McVay sees a lot of himself in Kingsbury (white guy with a manicured beard).
Your quarterback: It’s 2025 NFL MVP Matthew Stafford, who, as I discussed in last year’s edition, is a fake Matthew. You can’t go by Matt in college and then say “I’m Matthew now” when you enter the working world. You have to earn the name Matthew, typically by wearing chunky cardigans or watching the Tonys.
Twelve months ago, daily reports from Rams camp were that Stafford’s vertebrae had decomposed into chalk, but then he spent the preseason in a hyperbaric chamber as Swiss doctors injected his spine with gorilla stem cells. He was able to play all 17 games, leading the league in yards, first downs, touchdowns, and touchdown percentage. Annoying!
Stafford’s 7.7 percent touchdown rate in 2025 won’t happen again this year. Between 1980 and 2024, there were just 17 quarterback seasons with 300 or more passing attempts that reached a touchdown percentage of 7.5 or higher, and in EVERY instance, the quarterback’s TD percentage declined the following year, with an average dropoff of 2.8 percent. Stafford’s career TD rate is 4.8 percent, and it’s 5.6 percent since he joined the Rams. Guess who just got elected mayor of Regression City! (Yes, I combed through four decades of data just to declare that ol’ Matty Staff is only going to throw, like, 34 touchdowns this year. Haha, you piece of shit! Owned!)
Fun fact: Stafford is the godfather of Nebraska Cornhusker-turned-Oregon Duck Dylan Raiola, who at this point is more famous for Single White Female-ing Patrick Mahomes’s look than for anything he’s done on the field. I’d still take him over Ty Simpson.
What’s new that sucks: Well gosh. Let’s see here. Seems like last year, the Rams’ only identifiable weaknesses were cornerback and special teams, so they traded for two-time All-Pro CB Trent McDuffie and added his Chiefs teammate CB Jaylen Watson in free agency. (Durant has decamped to Dallas, assuming he’s not still lost in the Bears end zone.) They replaced their special teams coach and long snapper, which should lead to improvement, even if it’s only by upward regression. And they suffered no serious losses in free agency, so 2025’s second-best team looks even better than they were a year ago.
Oh yeah, one other thing: They swapped Jared Verse out for reigning Defensive Player of the Year and surefire Hall-of-Famer DE Myles Garrett. Shit.
It brings me great displeasure to report that Myles Garrett is cool as hell, man. I like Garrett. I want him to play for a winner. I want him to enjoy living in Los Angeles with his girlfriend Chloe Kim (also cool). He lost nine damn years of his life in Cleveland; he deserves to live a full and happy life with team success that matches his historic individual skill. Unfortunately, I have already fashioned a small wax poppet of Garrett and dropped a LEGO castle onto it from a second-story balcony. Alas. He led a good life.
Garrett’s presence, of course, has inspired DT Aaron Donald to un-retire, which has to be almost as fun for Angelenos as talking about crystals. We all know Donald is still in excellent shape because he’s done nothing but post workout videos for the last two years. Like all of LA’s least interesting men, Donald is a mid-30s fitness influencer. If I sound unimpressed by what should be a frightening addition to the best defensive line in football, I guess it’s because I’ve seen this L.A. story before:
I don’t think an underwhelming season from Donald is simply wishful thinking on my part; if it were, I’d be writing about the team bus careening off a Highway 1 hairpin and exploding on the rocks below.
As with all things Rams under McVay and GM Les Snead, the hubris that comes with so much success (one Super Bowl victory) also writes the team’s failures. In this case, it takes the form of backup rookie QB Ty Simpson, who started one season at Alabama before the Rams selected him 13th overall.
Here is the Rams’ thinking on this: The 13th pick, gifted to them by Atlanta in 2025 because the Falcons simply HAD to select James Pearce Jr. (YIKES), was house money. The Rams had already addressed their glaring hole at cornerback by trading their 29th pick (plus three more picks) for McDuffie, who is easily better than any cornerback in the 2026 draft. And with Simpson, McVay gets a project he can develop on a timeline that (theoretically) lines up with Stafford’s eventual retirement. (This is the same late-career Hall of Fame quarterback succession plan the Patriots deployed, and it worked out GREAT for Tom Brady.)
Here’s the reality: The last first-round quarterback with only one season of college starts was Anthony Richardson, who was the worst top-five pick this decade even before he broke his face with a resistance band. Simpson couldn’t steal the Bama job from Jalen Milroe despite Milroe losing twice in three weeks to Vanderbilt and Tennessee (Milroe presently sits third on the Seattle depth chart behind Drew Lock, and unfortunately I’ve watched enough Seahawks preseason football to confirm that this is the correct order of lousy quarterbacks). Simpson’s most frequent comp, Brock Purdy, is almost 20 pounds heavier, played two more full seasons in college, and was, quite famously, available at the end of the seventh round of the draft.
So why take a quarterback with a second- or third-round grade at the top of a weak draft? Certainly it has nothing to do with Alabama native Snead locking in on an Alabama quarterback!
McVay’s body language after the selection was so poisonous that he and Snead spent the rest of the draft assuring everyone, No, actually, we’re totally in lock-step on this very smart and rock-solid plan. I saw better acting in Megalopolis.
If McVay’s such a genius, couldn’t he develop a quarterback from the third or fourth round? (Or Stetson Bennett, who is already on the roster?) If the Rams are so hell-bent on winning the Super Bowl in their home stadium this February, wouldn’t that 13th pick have been better used on Kenyon Sadiq to super-charge McVay’s beloved 13 personnel? Or perhaps KC Concepcion as depth behind Davante Adams (old) and Puka Nacua (bit a woman)? Hell, the Rams know the value of the 13th pick—it’s where they drafted Aaron Donald!—but they let an obvious candidate for the D-line steal of the draft (Rueben Bain Jr.) slip to the Bucs instead. Or an offensive lineman! Everyone needs them! Take a free one in the first round!
Instead, the Rams responded to narrowly missing a championship in 2025 by passing on the opportunity to pick an impact player to help them win this year. Why? Because they think they’re already good enough. They don’t need one more player. They don’t need every extra edge. They’ve got the next Super Bowl all wrapped up, and the critics are only saying that the Rams had the second-worst draft in the entire league because they’re not as smart as the Rams. Not convinced? Just ask them.
I’ll say it: Snead and McVay are full of shit. Would the tale of Icarus be helpful here? No, because that would require someone in Los Angeles to read an entire story. Someone on the Rams staff made it halfway through and said, “Dude, Icarus flew so high! Sick wings, GOAT flyer.” Nobody in L.A. learns anything, ever, and there are so many morons here—I swear there are more Kobe murals than bookstores—that baseline competence passes for genius, and flash is considered substance. The only thing louder than the Rams’ impending crash will be my laughter when it happens.
What has always sucked: SO MUCH. But let’s start with everything Puka Nacua did off the field over the last year:
Nacua, a former Washington Husky, also talked shit about Seattle on that same podcast. “There’s nothing there, bro,” he said of the Emerald City, or possibly his skull. Last year, as Nacua began his Antonio Brown speedrun, one person working in NFL media told me, “He might be the dumbest man alive. Like, I don’t think he knows who the vice president is.”
This empty vessel for the manosphere was somehow blessed with hands forged by seraphim, which gives me the same feeling as when people note that Donald Trump is actually very funny. However, given Nacua’s iffy NFL speed, his love of McDonald’s, and his rumored history of being disliked by his teammates at both UW and BYU, he’ll get discarded like Cooper Kupp the minute he shows signs of slowing down (assuming he doesn’t do a tunnel walk in an SS uniform first). The minute he stops making contested catches, the Rams will drop him like a punt.
Stan Kroenke is the largest private landowner in America, owner of seven [Update: soon to be eight!] sports franchises, husband to a Walton heiress … and he needed Jerry fucking Jones to move his team from St. Louis to Los Angeles. Pathetic. Imagine being richer than God and still needing that braying Arkansas racist to influence people on your behalf. What a zero. How can a guy so successful be so ineffective with other rich dickheads?
Thanks to global warming, Los Angeles is now Phoenix with a beach and better politics. Not good politics, mind you. I’m often reminded of John Mulaney’s riff on the map of L.A.: “If you were rolling around town, you’d be like, ‘No mayor, right? … For no mayor, it’s going OK.’” That’s a good description for Karen Bass, the 72-year-old centrist Democrat seeking re-election and sucking in all the ways centrist Democrats usually do. Here’s a bald-faced attempt at doing a Mamdani that misses so badly it reads as sketch comedy:
You want me to fix a pothole? Well, I showed up at the pothole and DIDN’T fix it! But I DID put up some parking signs, which I hear people love! For fuck’s sake. Just retire, Grandma. You don’t have the cholesterol for this.
California is somehow the most progressive state in the country despite all the most powerful politicians cashing checks from Silicon Valley to legalize organ harvesting from unhoused people. Our senators make Kevin Demoff look inspiring. I hope Gavin Newsom gets hit by Kyle Shanahan’s Tesla. I’d take a crap on Ronald Reagan’s grave, but it would require driving to Simi Valley.
What might not suck: Angel’s Tijuana Tacos, by the Target parking lot in Eagle Rock. I would stand in line between Nacua and McVay for the al pastor.
HEAR IT FROM RAMS FANS!
Josh:
The Super Bowl ended a couple hours ago so I wanted to be the first to congratulate my team for posting back-to-back “Toughest Playoff Opponent for Eventual Super Bowl Champion” moral victories. That’s what they get for thinking NFL defenses didn’t need cornerbacks.
McVay is so bad at finding special teams coaches that he just hired a guy whose units are clearly declining under the new kick off rules. Bubba Ventrone sounds like a bad New York lounge singer.
The 2027 NFL Draft is supposed to be at the National Mall in DC when the despotic dried apricot Trump will likely have a banner of his face hanging on the Washington monument. Think I’ll get a year ahead of it and stop watching now. Fuck the Rams and the NFL.
Jonathan:
The 2026 Draft Class feels eerily similar to the 2021 Draft Class. (Derogatory)
Puka probably went to the same ̶p̶o̶d̶c̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶d̶i̶o̶ rehab facility as Stetson. Can’t wait for Clavicular to be invited into the locker room to teach Passmogging while TDmaxxing.
GM Les Snead, 2025: do seven mid cornerbacks equal two great ones?
GM Les Snead, 2026: WHAT IF WE MADE THE WHOLE PLANE OUT OF TIGHT ENDS
Fuck the LA municipal government from being unable to put out any metaphorical or literal fire. Last year the LAFD let Altadena (suburban with many easily controlled fire lines but black / brown) burn while tossing resources at the Palisades (a veritable lost cause tinder box but white) all while the Mayor dined at a gala in *checks notes* Ghana. While THIS YEAR we spent two weeks inhaling burnt solar panels, rotted meat, and actual rat shit – from a facility that already caught fire all the way back in the olden days of 2024 – while the Mayor openly conspired with the governor (hurk) and the presidential administration (bleeeeerg) to cover up the extant of the disaster. And the local electorate was *this* close to seeing Spencer fucking Pratt as the solution.
And double Fuck Stan Kroenke and his cross-league synergy. Fuck his Aves & Nuggs. Fuck his Arsenal. Fuck all gooners everywhere. Iz neva commin ‘ome m8.
Grippy:
Puka Nacua went from “favorite WR who reminds me of Hines Ward” to “car wreck of Blues Brothers magnitude” in about ten seconds. Dude looked at Ye and thought “hey that guy seems cool, wonder what his secret is?” Turns out it’s a potent cocktail of antisemitism and a lust for the taste of human flesh. To address the fallout he checked into a rehab center that was Montessori for CTE kids.
Kroenke has a failson and sweet Christ that family will own the Rams until the sun runs out of fuel. Georgia Frontiere was like if you imagine Rose had held Jack’s head underwater.
Craig:
First, I want to know what was the personal issue that McVay had prior to the presser he and Snead had where Sean looked like he was about to rip ass.
Next, Ty. Apparently they had secret and covert discussions with this guy that were superior to Obama’s plan to whack Bin Laden. How is that possible with social media these days?
The fact they wanted Kirk Cousins as the backup tells me, that the Ty pick wasn’t the building of the Atomic Bomb secret plan, rather a loser Snead pick.
I’ve seen the Rams WR3 Jordan Whittington. He sucks ass.
Lastly, why Stetson still on this team?
Oh and fuck Eric Dickerson. No reason, just fuck him.
Joe:
We’ve reached the point where another 11 win season and NFC Championship game will feel like a disappointment. Smite us with fire.
Everyone talks about who we have on the team, but you know what we don’t have? – Any depth.
In a season full of expectations, instead of addressing that depth anywhere with an early first round blue chipper on the o-line, wide out, etc. we drafted TY SIMPSON. A guy who will be tasked holding a clipboard behind Stafford for the next 3 years, but looks like the villain in a Hallmark movie whose crime is wanting to build a tasteful mixed-use development. Maybe he’ll end up cosplaying as that with all the spare time he’ll have.
Sean McVay will start using 4 tight end packages this season and we’re going to tell everyone we know it’s groundbreaking play calling (Please never leave us, Sean).
We can only blame ourselves for enabling Puka to behave like the LA Version of Nick Bosa that’s on meth and way too online. He probably has Antonio Brown on speed dial.
Rams fans should be proud and excited but instead we’re going to be temperamental cynical blowhards for 17 consecutive weeks. Those who even know the team has fans will be hating us soon enough. Our schedule is so brutal we’ll be so lucky to be fully healthy going into the playoffs. We’ll be holding complimentary support group yoga sessions on the beach, but we upcharge on Kombucha.
Also, we’re over the modern design on the helmet. The organization keeps forcing it on us even though all we want is the classic horn design. Fuck them with an actual Ram horn or one of the 20 tight ends we currently have on the roster.
Neill:
I’ve spent the last eight months trying to explaining to my dad, my oldest friend, and one incredibly patient bartender in Tarzana why the Rams traded their only first-round pick to a team that used it to draft an edge rusher who spent his rookie year torching our secondary like our now nearly annual wildfires. Among other apparent 4D chess draft moves.
None of it mattered, because Seattle beat us in overtime in Week 16 to steal the division on a tiebreaker, and then beat us AGAIN, after we clawed through Carolina (who’d beaten us in the regular season—that was fun to sit with) and needed overtime just to get past a Bears team that finished behind us. All that meticulous, cold-blooded asset management, and we still lost to the exact same team twice in six weeks. During the fourth quarter of that NFC Championship game, McVay had the exact face of a man who just realized he left the stove on.
Snead and McVay then decided to mortgage the future and win now by . . . using our 2026 First Rounder to draft a guy who we’re all supposed to just trust is going to someday, eventually, don’t worry about it, step neatly into Stafford’s shoes, despite a track record of back-end-of-the-season chokes; hiring Kliff Fucking Kingsbury as Assistant Head Coach; and leaving a Rob Havenstein-sized hole in our offensive line that I’m sure won’t trouble our effortlessly agile QB.
Anyway, 12-5. See you later this year, when we mostly struggle past lesser teams for the right to get the shiv from a team we had more than enough opportunity to game plan from prior direct experience.
Paul:
I grew up in the St. Louis area. Some of my earliest memories are of going to games at the TWA Dome during the years they trotted out Tony Banks as the Quarterback. They were bad, but I got to hang out with my dad and eat Nachos while watching football, which was good. When I was 9 years old, they won a shockingly exciting Super Bowl with an outstandingly fun team. Shortly after, they resumed being terrible again. One of my most prized possessions is an autographed photo of Isaac Bruce that we got when our friend told us he was signing autographs outside of a Blockbuster in the suburbs one day.
I was an adult living in Washington DC when the news finally came down that they were leaving. The NFL chose to inform my old man, a former season ticket holder, of this news by mailing him some information on the other regional NFL teams he could purchase tickets for. For the past few years, my wife and I have lived in the Seattle area. Having been a transplant for most of my adult life, people often ask me about my favorite NFL team. When people that I like the St. Louis Rams, this is often a surprise as there is not a team named the St. Louis Rams. In the years since, I have nurtured a developing psychosis by playing Madden 16, just so that I can take the Rams to the Super Bowl year after year alongside franchise icons Nick Foles and Jeff Fisher.
Last fall my wife and I had our first child. Shortly after he was born, his hometown team won the Super Bowl. Unlike his old man, his team will still exist in two decades. He will grow up talking about the Seahawks with his friends, while learning to tune me out as I talk about the time I got an autograph from a player on a team that no longer exists outside of a store whose format is so antiquated that the entire industry folded.
The league cares so little about STL that no one on the HOF committee is around to advocate for Torry Holt, even though he’s 17th all time in yardage.
Josh:
Every year I tell myself that there’s no way Sean McVay will overthink a game against an inferior opponent and blow a winnable game that ends up costing us down the line. Every year I am proven to be a mindless imbecile who doesn’t realize the futility of asking God for a favor. I really have no room to gripe, the front office adds aggressively, the coaching staff is so hilariously above what we’ve previously dealt with that I may have to quit football whenever Sean Patel decides to take his 10 pounds of hair gel and coked out eyes to Fox to try and explain offensive concepts while Gronk crushes cans of Monster against his head, and we have a Hall of Fame MVP quarterback running the team! I would have prayed for days like this back in the Spagnolo era so what could I have to bitch about? Here’s me bitching anyways:
– I have never seen a team less capable of holding a second half lead. It’s like McVay thinks a 4 score win is not honorable and must instead make fans lives hell by forking over a multi score lead and requiring a secondary made of future Enterprise sale reps to hold out against Josh Allen after burning 12 seconds of game clock every drive starting in the 3rd quarter.
– Puka Nacua went from awesome story, to legit case of being the best WR in the league, to guy who I have to mentally gymnastic around literal Nazi behavior before we even get to the biting charges. He’s going to score against the Cardinals and proceed to celebrate by clubbing a baby seal to death with the ball in the end zone.
– We still cannot establish a solid enough fanbase to avoid everyone selling their tickets to Niners fans and painting the stadium red when those assholes come to town. It looks like my TV has herpes every time they play at SoFi.
– We are pinning our hopes on the idea that a 35 year old DT 2.5 years removed from his last game will come back and somehow put this team over the top. If it doesn’t work, we are staring down the barrel of a 3 year pile of ass after all the extensions kick in, Stafford retires and Ty Simpson gets trotted out to have his spine ripped out Predator style every time Leonard Williams gets through our paper mache OL.
Fuck Stan Kroenke and his land grabbing ass. Fuck Georgia Frontiere. Fuck Mike Martz. Fuck Adin Ross. And finally, QUADRUPLE MEGA FUCK Brad Allen and all those feckless fucks in New York with a roto rooter for granting a 2 point conversion on a dead ball during the commercial.
Orellien:
The thing to understand about the Ty Simpson draft pick is that Los Angeles is only just barely beginning to accept that it has a football team that we might want to root for. This is a city with a lot of other teams to pay attention to, not to mention all the non-sports stuff. LA is not ready to go ride-or-die for a local Football team yet.
So, they had to draft the QB of the future while still in Superbowl or Bust mode. Do you really think fans in LA are going to sit through five years of misery for a full rebuild? We play in Inglewood, not New Jersey, damn it!
Lance:
I’ll begin by reminding everyone that the Rams are pioneers in the field of Anaheim-as-Los Angeles cosplay.
Being a Rams fan is a bit like having a cool step dad. I’m sure Myles Garrett will be great and all, but damn mom, you couldn’t make it work with Jared Verse? Dodger and Laker fans no longer harbor true animosity towards opposing players. The assumption is they’ll someday wear their preferred uniform. I’d say the same thing is happening to Ram fans, but it’s hard to draw any conclusions from the infinitesimally small sample size.
Drew loves LA. Drew loves the beach. It’s not much of a stretch to conclude he’s fantasizing about retiring to Manhattan Beach someday. While I want the best for Defector Media — success, fulfillment, happiness — I draw the line at LA land baron wealth. Fuck off with that Bill Simmons shit.
Josh:
If I had a nickel for every time a rookie QB threw their first career touchdown pass in the final 2 minutes of the first half against the Rams 2025 defense, I’d have two nickels – which isn’t a lot but of course it fucking happened twice against those cornerbacks.
Jeff:
I am a 49-y.o. lifetime So-Cal resident and know exactly one organic fan of this team. Absolutely no one here remembers anything about this team from before they left for St. Louis other than Eric Dickerson’s jheri curl (he’s been as bald as Mr. Clean for years now).
The only reliable fanbase is the local media hypetrain and the clowns that show up to any televised “fan event” for the off chance they will get their face on TV for a half-second. There are still more Raiders, Cowboys, Packers, Steelers, and 49ers fans here than actual Rams fans. My own son chose to be a fan of the Jaguars before he even considered the Rams. The Kings and Sparks have more passionate and loyal fanbases.
The only times the faces of the team are ever mentioned in day to day conversation are as objects of mockery and derision (Stafford’s wife insisting that everyone call him “Matthew”, McVay’s “wine guy” persona, Nacua’s overall dumbassery).They want to make Aaron Donald some kind of folk-hero but nobody cares about retired players here (even Kershaw barely exists in the minds of most people here now that he’s retired).
The front office gets a lot of praise but there is no backup qb and the rosy predictions are all premised on 38 year old Stafford remaining injury free. Two seasons ago they were ready to enter tank mode and McVay almost quit because Stafford looked iffy and they still don’t have a viable backup.
Sean:
I’m writing this email on August 27th and still expect to be featured as one of five reader submissions because nobody cares about this team except podcasters.
I have spent the last 9 months trying to convince myself that Puka Nacua is too stupid to be genuinely anti-semitic, which suggests I am not much smarter than he is.
“Whose House?” is the dumbest fucking team chant and I will still yell it any time something good happens.
At least they got rid of the number gradients on the uniforms.
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