Rams have been here before but this year was supposed to be different
· Yahoo Sports
DENVER — Sean McVay has been in this position before. It’s not a predicament he enjoys, but it’s one he has helped the Rams navigate their way out of over the past three years. The season starts with expectations, September brings frustration and the team spends the next few months reminding everyone why it was worth believing in.
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This year, however, was supposed to be different. The Rams were being called a “super team.” There was talk of an undefeated season and whether this might be the greatest collection of talent the franchise had ever assembled. Three games into the season, the Rams are 1-2 and trying to figure out how a 16-0 lead turned into a 30-26 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday Night Football.
The undefeated season is gone. The super team label can go with it. What remains is a team talented enough to win a championship and flawed enough to give away a game it controlled for much of the night.
The Rams could explain away their season-opening loss to the San Francisco 49ers by pointing to a travel plan that had them arriving in Australia roughly a day before kickoff. McVay finally poked fun at himself last week when he said, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn and sometimes you have a dumbass coach that makes travel plans that put you in a bad spot.”
For anyone willing to treat Melbourne as an expensive lesson, the Rams’ season appeared to begin with their 28-6 victory over the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. That feeling carried into Denver, where they built a 16-0 halftime lead and were still shutting out the Broncos midway through the third quarter.
Then the game changed. Denver scored 16 unanswered points to tie it and outscored the Rams 30-10 after their early cushion. A night that looked like another step toward putting Australia behind them ended with the same uncomfortable question: How can a team with this much talent look so vulnerable?
There were calls the Rams had reason to question, including a pass interference penalty near the goal line that McVay said looked like “a good competitive play” from his vantage point. But a team leading by 16 points in the third quarter shouldn’t need a favorable whistle to finish the job. The Rams had enough opportunities to make the officiating a footnote.
They settled for field goals when touchdowns could have put Denver in a much deeper hole. They committed penalties that pushed the offense backward. They allowed the Broncos to convert the two-point attempts that erased their lead. And when Matthew Stafford threw an interception that Talanoa Hufanga returned for a touchdown, another opportunity to take control became another opportunity for Denver.
“We had too many penalties that put us in negative situations and then obviously the turnover when they ended up taking it back the other way that was costly,” McVay said. “But it was really impressive to be able to go match it and score, and we just came up short tonight.”
That response matters. Stafford followed the interception with a touchdown pass to Konata Mumpfield that put the Rams back in front. This wasn’t a team that quit when the game turned against it. It was a team that kept creating problems its resilience couldn’t quite overcome.
“We just didn’t execute as well,” Stafford said of the second half. “We got behind the sticks, had a sack or two. Did a nice job in the run game against us for a little bit, and then we just weren’t efficient enough.”
Afterward, the frustration was obvious. Panic was harder to find. The Rams know how much football remains, and McVay has enough evidence from recent seasons to believe September doesn’t have to define what comes next.
Last season, they were 3-2 before eventually advancing to the NFC Championship Game. In 2024, they started 1-4 before winning nine of their next 11 games and claiming the NFC West. In 2023, they were 3-6 before closing the regular season with seven wins in eight games, their only loss during that stretch coming in overtime at Baltimore.
Those seasons are a reason to trust McVay’s ability to get this team moving in the right direction. They’re also a reminder of how much work it takes to recover from a slow start. The Rams know they can climb out of a hole. They would prefer to stop digging one.
“There’s a lot of football left, and it’s not like we’re not playing good ball, obviously excluding that first game,” Davante Adams said. “But there’s no moral victories, so we’re definitely disappointed to not finish it out.”
Adams offered perhaps the most useful perspective in the locker room. The Rams don’t have to pretend everything is broken to acknowledge that Sunday was a missed opportunity. They played well enough to win for long stretches. They also made enough mistakes to lose, and the standings don’t give them credit for the portions of the game they would like to remember.
There is another reason to resist making any early judgments on this team: The Rams playing now aren’t the version they expect to have later in the season. Myles Garrett and Puka Nacua have missed the past two games after playing in the opener. Nacua could return as soon as Sunday in Philadelphia, while Garrett’s return remains further away. Their absences have left the Rams without two of the players who made the preseason expectations so high.
Aaron Donald is still working his way back, too. Asked Sunday whether he was still getting into playing shape, he said, “Still getting there. Got to keep getting better, keep improving every week.”
A healthier Nacua changes what Stafford and McVay can do offensively. Garrett’s eventual return and Donald’s continued progress offer the possibility of a defense that can make life much harder on opposing quarterbacks. There is good reason to believe this team can look considerably different in a few weeks.
But the Rams can’t spend those weeks waiting to be rescued. Getting their stars back won’t automatically eliminate penalties, protect the football or turn every trip into scoring range into a touchdown. Those are responsibilities for the players already on the field, and Stafford didn’t try to pass them off.
“Obviously I got to be better, and I will be,” he said.
That is the balance the Rams have to find now. They can believe in what they will become while being honest about what they are. They can take confidence from previous turnarounds without assuming another one is guaranteed. And they can acknowledge that Sunday’s loss hurts precisely because they didn’t need to be a fully healthy super team to win it.
“This is sports, you sign up for all of it, and I love our group,” McVay said. “Just came up short. Give the Broncos credit; they found a way to get it done. We’ll look at ourselves and figure out how we can improve.”
The Rams won’t go undefeated, and they haven’t earned the right to be called a super team. Neither distinction will matter if they finish the season raising the Lombardi Trophy at SoFi Stadium. But if that is still where this season is supposed to end, Sunday was a reminder that they have to get much better at finishing the games in front of them.