Los Angeles Rams face their biggest test of the season now
By Keith Rivas
Hosting the Atlanta Falcons on Wild Card Weekend, the Los Angeles Rams have it all on the line now.
It’s been one incredible turnaround for sophomore quarterback Jared Goff, but it’s been absolutely worth the ride. Taking tremendous strides after a drama-filled rookie season, Goff has led the Rams to the top of all offenses in football.
And he’s not done yet.
Saturday’s test comes in the form of the pesky Atlanta Falcons, who are hell-bent on changing their reputation after the historic collapse against New England in last season’s Super Bowl. Matt Ryan and company got into the playoffs in the final week of the regular season, but this has been a moment waiting for the Rams for quite some time.
The better question, though, remains if they are ready to accept the challenge.
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Not getting in their own way, like the Chargers are excellent at, is one thing. But this game versus the Falcons will also tell us just how real this Rams team is or if we were fools to think they were the real deal.
Nevertheless, rookie head coach Sean McVay deserves an incredible amount of credit for helping Los Angeles go from a 4-12 record to 11-5 and winning their division. It was probably one of the more murky and unclear situations going into the last off-season in terms of what the future held, but hiring McVay was what saved them.
They’ll need their star running back and league MVP candidate in Todd Gurley to be lights and to be an x-factor, especially without their best special teams unit available with the absence of Greg Zuerlein.
Los Angeles cannot afford to let Julio Jones get hot early in this game, otherwise all they’ll be doing is playing catch up and hoping for a stop to try and get back in control of things. If this game wasn’t in Southern California, the Rams would definitely have a harder time.
But if they can control the tempo from early on against the birds, they’ll give the Coliseum something to rally behind.
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And with football back in Los Angeles since last season, isn’t that what we’ve been waiting for?