Plaschke: What a sight! Rams save their season with awestruck win against 49ers

Joshua Karty, right, exults after kicking the winning field goal with two seconds left in the Rams’ 27-24 win over the San Francisco 49ers at SoFi Stadium on Sunday. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

“Holy —!”

Sean McVay began his postgame news conference like a slack-jawed sailor, but he spoke the truth.

Holy rebound. Holy resilience. Holy Rams.

They began this stomach knot of a Sunday afternoon flat on their backs, trailing the San Francisco 49ers by two touchdowns in the first 15 minutes — winless and helpless and hopeless.

SoFi Stadium was blanketed in red, Niners fans owning the building, the defending NFC champs owning the moment, the 0-2 locals riddled with injuries and on the statistical brink of extinction.

“It would have been easy for guys to say, ‘It’s not looking good,’’’ said Troy Reeder.

Except, holy comeback, these are the Rams.

Read more: Rams’ Sean McVay on shocking comeback to beat 49ers: ‘Lot of guts. Lot of grit’

This is the organization with the strongest culture in Los Angeles sports. This is a group so connected, so single-minded, so sturdy, they never feel that greatness is beyond their reach.

They reached a Super Bowl with Jared Goff. They won a Super Bowl with no running backs. They most recently turned a 3-6 season into a playoff berth.

They’re the Rams, McVay’s Rams, and they believe they can do anything, and so even during their darkest moments Sunday, Reeder sensed only light.

“I was walking up and down the sideline and I just felt like everybody was confident that at some point, we would get a momentum swing,” he said.

It was a swing that resulted in the football version of a walk-off homer. It was a swing that saved a season.

On the verge of falling to 0-3 and having just a 2% chance of eventually making the playoffs, the Rams outfought a tough Niners defense, outshined a nifty Niners quarterback, and outplayed the Niners with a late 13-0 run to steal a 27-24 victory with two perfect endings.

Xavier Smith celebrates…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/plaschke-sight-rams-save-season-100001197.html

Author : LA Times

Publish date : 2024-09-23 10:00:01

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.