It was a slog. It was a battle of attrition. There were a half-dozen players on the field who probably shouldn’t be playing in a Super Bowl. But in the end, three superstars carried the night and led the Rams to a Super Bowl title.
Conor and Gary break it all down, from the near-impossible Stafford-to-Kupp game-winning drive, to the impact of the Odell Beckham Jr. injury, to Raheem Morris and the L.A. defense figuring things out then shutting the Bengals down.
After winning the Super Bowl, where do the aggressive Rams go from here? What does the future hold for the Burrow-led Bengals? And what does it mean that the longest season in NFL history ended with two injury-ravaged teams crawling to the finish line?
Plus, a look at the week’s non-Super Bowl news: the Colts’ reported breakup with Carson Wentz and more fractures in the Kyler Murray-Cardinals relationship.
Have a comment, critique or question for a future mailbag? Email [email protected] or tweet at @GGramling_SI or @ConorOrr.
Gary Gramling: We are going to start off by kind of marveling at that game-winning drive by the Rams because it seemed like we were at a point where no one was going to score again, ever.
Conor Orr: Yeah Sean McVay officially looked out of ideas, the moment that they ran their version of the Philly Special, which looked broken from the start, right? Cooper Kupp is obviously super athletic, but when he takes that ball and he's throwing it to Matt Stafford, if Matt Stafford caught that ball, he would have been split in half by Jessie Bates. And we would not have a game-winning Super Bowl drive. But at that time, they were so dependent on having Odell Beckham as that ancillary weapon, that when he went down, Van Jefferson wasn't quite enough, and so they were just stuck. Because Cooper Kupp was double-teamed and all of a sudden you're kind of in that space where, you know, no Tyler Higbee no OBJ, you needed that secondary weapon.
Gary Gramling: And I'm glad you brought up that LA Special play because … and look, this is what we know because this is what we watched the last 20 years. And that's a new England Patriots offense. And whenever the Patriots had those seasons where they didn't quite get to the Super Bowl or things fell apart for one reason or another, one of the red flags, one of the canaries in the coal mine type of things would be when Josh McDaniels would resort to all these gadget plays and reverses and passes off those plays and that sort of thing. And that's the position the Rams found themselves in. But on this final drive, they just kind of decided, okay well, we're just going to throw it at Cooper Kupp no matter what. I will say, it's not getting the proper respect, but Matthew Stafford, it was a second and seven, a 22-yard pass, it was a no-look-pass, there were essentially four defenders there and Stafford through a no-look-pass pass that opened up just enough of a window. It was the big chunk gain, it was a 22 yard gain. That was as big of a throw, as we saw all post-season. Considering the situation they were in, considering the dire straits they were facing at that point, I just can't imagine a bigger play being ripped off and really just manufactured out of virtually nothing.
Conor Orr: Yeah, that was the play that all the coaches were kind of buzzing about after this game. And on one hand, it's like, okay, that was phenomenal. And the other it's like, don't you possess that ability? Like, I still don't understand the three quarters where this offense was completely bone dry, just because they lost a receiver that they didn't have at the beginning of the season anyway. And that narrative that, oh, it's so much attrition and we're in so much trouble because we lost Odell Beckham. All that said, it doesn't take away from the fact that that throw was absolutely ridiculous. I'm excited for kind of a better all 22 look if we're afforded a non-garbage product to watch all 22.
Gary Gramling: The only way you're getting that look is if you travel back in time and just position yourself on the roof of a SoFi Stadium there.
Conor Orr: So well, that was the one time, right? So we're actually seated in the corner of the end zone there. And so we had the perfect all 22 views of that. And I was like, dang that was awesome. And then you go and you try to watch the replay from NFL Twitter, and you're like, I'm never going to see this play again, and then I'm going to sound like an old person who's making it up.
Gary Gramling: Well, let's run down that final series near the goal line when the flags sort of started coming out and I had no problem with a couple of those flags, the Logan Wilson hold, that was a little bit dicey.
Conor Orr: It was a make-up call.
Gary Gramling: Yeah, which is why I'm comfortable with it. And look, the biggest play of the game before that was the missed offensive pass interference/face mask on Tee Higgins on the play that broke open the game to start the second half.
Conor Orr: Yeah, I would say that it evened out. Do I have a problem with overall cadence? Maybe a little bit, right? Because I think it was four penalties total up until that point. And then it was four on that drive alone. And I think the four before that were almost all like false start delay of gamey kind of things. If I'm remembering that correctly. I might be hallucinating, but I think that's what it was.
Gary Gramling: Yeah, a couple of personal foul calls.
Conor Orr: But I think it was condensed in that moment. You know, you're never going to have a perfect performance officiating-wise. And I don't blame them for, you know, almost officiating like a Big East college basketball crew for three quarters and just letting people knock each other around, and then in the fourth quarter be like, oh man, we better get a handle on this before it gets messy. So yeah, they officiated the game sort of like a vintage Big East crew for a little bit, but you have to jump in at some point. Like, I think the NFL was thrilled with it. We've seen this trend from officials in a lot of big games of late, where they only step in when everybody is watching and then you're in the magnifying lens. But otherwise, just let it go and just kind of allow them to play unless something totally crazy happens.
Gary Gramling: I think we're all in that, scoring too fast is no good type of thing. I actually didn't mind it in this game because it just seemed like the Bengals were so unlikely to put points on the board. And on top of that, if you're the Rams, I don't know if you could really rely on being like, well, we'll just get to third down, and then we'll punch it in. They didn't move the ball forward with the running game for 59 minutes of football.
Conor Orr: They didn't, and it was almost because of that, that I think they called their most brilliant play of the entire day when they had that fourth and one, that they needed to have on the game-winning drive. What they basically did was they blocked the front – like a quarterback sneak. So, the center and the two interior guards were dive blocking, like you would for an interior sneak. And so then if you watched all the Bengals players, they all piled on top of them because they were just expecting to shove Stafford backward, and then you give Cooper Kupp the ball and, he's not Deebo Samuel, but his spatial awareness is so much better than anyone else in the NFL. I would hand him the ball in the backfield before I would have handed Cam Akers the ball in the backfield at that point. He can just get around people better.
Gary Gramling: If you wanted to run the ball in this game and you were the Ram's maybe Cooper Kupp needed to get like 14 carries or something like that.
Conor Orr: Do you want to hear a wild stat about that carry? That was their first carry of the game that netted a positive EPA (expected points added) first positive rush of the entire game.
Gary Gramling: First non-scramble rush?
Conor Orr: Yes, which is wild. And the Rams are one of five teams in the Super Bowl to rush for less than two yards a carry, they're the only team to win the Super Bowl rushing for fewer than two yards a carry.
Gary Gramling: They did that, they lost the turnover battle two to nothing. And we saw one sustained drive from the Bengals. We also saw two big plays. There was the long one to Ja'Marr Chase, which was just a gorgeous throw and one-handed catch downfield. And we saw the big Tee Higgins play obviously to open the second half. Other than that, there was the one drive and there was nothing else. And let's say conservatively, late in the second quarter, Raheem Morris had a beat on what they were doing to Aaron Donald, he was going to take advantage of that. He started using Donald basically slanting away from the right side of the offensive line and then looping Von Miller back in, and it was just too easy for the Rams pass rush at that point.
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