For 17 straight seasons now, a defending NFL champion has failed to win the following season’s Super Bowl.
The New England Patriots were the last to do it, in 2003 and 2004. That was when Bill Belichick still looked fairly fit and youthful, and Tom Brady — well OK, he looked a little younger than he does now at age 45.
Anyhow, what makes the Los Angeles Rams believe they can trash the trend in ’22? Especially after losing a few impact performers?
The Rams open defence of their 2021 league championship by playing host to the popular favourite to win this season’s Super Bowl, the Buffalo Bills, at home on Thursday night (8:20 p.m. EDT, CTV2 and TSN via NBC).
The game kicks off the 2022 NFL regular season. All 30 other teams open either Sunday or Monday.
The Rams open defence of their title without a few key offensive performers. First, their long-time star left offensive tackle, Andrew Whitworth, retired. Plus their two next-best playmaking wide receivers of 2021, after all-pro and Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp — namely, Robert Woods (who tore an ACL last season and now is a Tennessee Titan) and Odell Beckham Jr. (who tore an ACL in the first half of L.A.’s Super Bowl win over Cincinnati, and remains a free agent).
Defensively, L.A.’s biggest loss was star edge rusher Von Miller, whom the Rams acquired early last November in a trade with Denver. He became an impact performer by playoff time, but he signed a huge free-agent contract in March with another team.
Which team? The Bills, as it happens.
Buffalo gave Miller a six-year contract worth $120 million — a staggering $20-million per-year average for the 12th-year outside linebacker, who turned 33 in March.
Miller was the third fastest NFLer to reach 50 sacks, needing just 58 career games. In 2015 Miller was named Super Bowl MVP after the Broncos beat Carolina. He’s now hoping to win his third career Super Bowl with the Bills, who never have won one.
“We know what kind of great player he is now,” Rams head coach Sean McVay said this week. “How (the Bills) activate him is to be determined. We’ll have to be ready to adjust and adapt, but he is a guy that you have to be totally aware of. There’s a reason why both our teams wanted him so badly.”
So while the Rams’ pass rush probably is weakened by Miller’s loss, even with interior D-line demon Aaron Donald still wrecking plays left and right, the club did bolster the defence elsewhere. First, by trading for a solid corner to start opposite Jalen Ramsey, in former Cleveland Brown Troy Hill, and also by signing ex-Seattle stalwart linebacker Bobby Wagner.
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Former Chicago Bear Allen Robinson, a talented but under-performing veteran wide receiver, signed with the Rams in March. He’ll have to do a lot to complement Kupp as well as Woods then Beckham did last year, especially with L.A.’s third ostensible starting wideout, Van Jefferson, who again did not practise this week after undergoing minor knee surgery more than a month ago now.
Maybe the best things the Rams have going for themselves Thursday night are:
• It’s a home game, where probably a third of the crowd will be proudly sporting some manner of 2021 SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS gear. The locals figure to be as fired up as an L.A. crowd can get for its football team (big asterisk indeed).
• Secondly, their starting QB. Matthew Stafford, who is in his first season as a Ram following 13 in Detroit. Yes, he did lead the NFL last season with 17 interceptions, and that worry compounds with a lesser receiving corps. But Stafford proved, once and for all, down the stretch last season that he’s a winner who deserved his Super Bowl championship.
• Thirdly, head coach McVay’s Rams have yet to lose an opener. They’re 5-0 in his tenure. “I think it’s that our guys have played really well in the opener,” McVay said. “It’s about the players. Every single game is a totally separate entity.”
As for the Bills, it’s still a strange thing indeed to see a team that — for most of two decades — could not have been a smaller blip on the NFL’s relevancy map, to now, suddenly after two seasons of QB Josh Allen’s explosion into a superstar stud, being almost everybody’s favourite to win Super Bowl LVII come Feb. 12.
The buzz is earned. Because Allen’s play seems to become more scintillating by the game. It might be a long time before any of us sees a QB playoff performance as Allen put forth in the fourth quarter of the Bills’ heartbreaking playoff loss at Kansas City in January.
Few NFL players are as cocky, and averse to flattering the opposition, as Ramsey — arguably the league’s best cover cornerback, now entering his third full season as a Ram.
“He’s good. He’s on a good team,” Ramsey said Tuesday of Allen. “I ain’t gonna lie to y’all — I’m not about to sit up here and boost him up, like y’all want. Maybe other people doing (that). I ain’t doing that. I ain’t gonna be extra.
“They’re good, but we’re good too over here. We’ll see him on Thursday. We’re going to play football, but I ain’t going to sit here and boost nobody up. Nobody.”
Wagner, the former Seahawks linebacker now on the Rams, made up for Ramsey’s breathlessness a bit. Allen’s ability to run somehow continues to confound defences, media and fans alike — when, in fact, he’s as dangerous as any rock-lugger in the league, to which his NFL-best 6.3-yards-per-carry in 2021 attests.
“He’s not looking to go out of bounds,” Wagner said, per Jourdan Rodrigue of TheAthletic.com. “He’s not looking to shy away from contact. As a defender, you appreciate it, respect it. You just understand that when he’s out of the pocket, you gotta treat him like a running back.”
Maybe this matchup will wind up even book-ending the NFL season. With the other coming Feb. 12, in the Super Bowl. Which would give the Rams the chance to repeat — and trash the current trend.
John Kryk writes a weekly newsletter on NFL matters. Content is exclusive to that platform. You can have it automatically dropped into your email inbox on Wednesdays simply by signing up — for free — at https://torontosun.com/newsletters/
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