By OGNSC Staff
PHILADELPHIA — For three and a half quarters Sunday, the Los Angeles Rams looked like a team headed for a 1-3 start. Then Matthew Stafford and Kyren Williams went to work.
Williams scored two touchdowns in the final four minutes, and the Rams rallied from 10 points down to beat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-20 at a rain-soaked Lincoln Financial Field. The win evens Los Angeles at 2-2 and keeps the Rams in the thick of the NFC West race.
It was not pretty. Stafford, the reigning league MVP, threw two interceptions that set up 10 Eagles points, and Philadelphia took a 20-10 lead into halftime. Special teams miscues and a pair of failed fourth-down tries kept the Rams stuck in the mud for most of the afternoon.
“Plenty of plays where we didn’t get the result we wanted,” Stafford said afterward. “But we got the result we wanted at the end of the game.”
A Huddle and a Message
As the third quarter wound down with his team still trailing by 10, head coach Sean McVay gathered the entire offense around him on the sideline. Stafford summed up the message simply: the coach was trying to put some belief in his team.
“Guys, we’re capable,” McVay said he told them. “You got to believe and we got to just string good plays together. Our defense is doing everything that they can to keep us in this game.”
The offense responded. A 98-yard drive, aided by an unnecessary roughness penalty on Philadelphia, ended with Williams punching it in from a yard out with 3:59 left to cut the lead to 20-17.
The Eagles went three-and-out again, and the Rams got the ball back with less than three minutes to play. Stafford hit Puka Nacua three times on the 10-play, 79-yard march and added an eight-yard scramble of his own. Williams finished it, breaking several tackles on a seven-yard touchdown run with 1:10 remaining.
McVay celebrated by sprinting down the sideline and nearly leapfrogging safety Quentin Lake.
“I think a lot of teams would have folded in those situations,” McVay said. “I think our defense kept giving us a reason to believe.”
Defense Does the Heavy Lifting
The comeback does not happen without the Rams defense, which smothered a banged-up Eagles offense all day. Philadelphia went 0-for-12 on third down, finished with just 68 net passing yards and 172 yards of total offense, and did not score a point in the second half.
The Eagles have now been outscored 31-0 after halftime in their last two games, both losses. Philadelphia head coach Nick Sirianni took the blame for a failed fourth-down call that handed the Rams a short field during the rally.
“You go for it and you get it, great,” Sirianni said. “You go for it and don’t get it, that’s on the head coach.”
Nacua Back in the Lineup
Stafford finished 32-of-51 for 317 yards, and most of that went to Nacua, who returned from injury and caught nine passes for 125 yards. Williams had a complete afternoon with 80 yards and two scores on 16 carries plus 10 catches for 67 yards.
The Rams came in averaging 417 yards a game, second in the NFL, and moved the ball again Sunday. The turnovers and the fourth-down gambles simply kept the scoreboard from showing it until late.
Bills Come to SoFi
The Rams get a short turnaround on the travel but a big one on the schedule. Buffalo visits SoFi Stadium on Sunday in a matchup of two offenses ranked in the top 10 in yards per game.
McVay said finding a way to win an ugly one could matter down the road.
“You can’t win it until the fourth quarter,” he said, “and our guys came alive when they did.”
Stafford put it in plainer terms. Instead of 1-3, the Rams are 2-2, and he called the win proof of a group that stayed steady when the game got sideways.