Rams’ Aggressive Roster Build Pays Off in Super Bowl Win
The New York Times
Bartering draft capital to acquire Matthew Stafford and other stars, the Rams traded their future for a shot at a championship. Sunday’s win over the Cincinnati Bengals validated the risk.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The Los Angeles Rams know there are many ways to win in the modern N.F.L., yet every year 31 of them are wrong. The only methodology conclusively confirmed to work belongs to the team hugging and crying beneath cascading confetti after the season’s final game. On Sunday night, that falling royal blue and yellow confetti validated the Rams’ iconoclastic team-building approach that upended a hidebound league.
Los Angeles hired the youngest coach in N.F.L. history. Instead of hoping first-round draft picks would become stars, the team traded them for proven A-listers. The Rams dealt a quarterback who played in a Super Bowl — because they did not think Jared Goff could lead them to another — for one, the veteran Matthew Stafford, who had never won a playoff game.
In a fitting climax to this exhilarating, disjointed mess of a season, Los Angeles scored a late touchdown to topple the upstart Cincinnati Bengals, 23-20, on its home field at SoFi Stadium, the $5 billion bauble erected by the Rams’ owner, E. Stanley Kroenke. It was the Rams’ second Super Bowl title and first since moving westward six years ago to a land of excess and extravagance that reflects their roster, which abounds with standouts by design.
