Does Sunday's Game Say More About Rams or Broncos?
Call the Los Angeles Rams a bizarro Ebenezer Scrooge: rather than offer promotions on Christmas Day, they instead bestow firings.
A loss to the defending champions narrated by Patrick Star was enough for the Broncos to officially close the door on the brief yet comedic Nathaniel Hackett era, the 51-14 shellacking serving as the last straw in a season that frankly featured several of them for the Rocky Mountain boss now relieved of his duties.
Bullying the Broncos allowed for a Southern California Christmas furlough of sorts, a reprieve from the brutality of the Rams' woebegone campaign. The game had little bearing on either the forming NFL playoff bracket or even the draft board, as both teams sacrificed their primary draft picks toward a supposed greater good.
Of course, with only 17 opportunities for each team on a yearly basis, no game in the NFL ever feels truly meaningless, even Sunday's dirge that brought about a perfect storm of losing in both the on-field and transactional senses. To that end, one has to wonder in the aftermath ... did the Rams' dominance say more about the hosts or their beleaguered Colorado visitors?
At first glance, it's easy to say the former: even armed with the positive momentum of playing playoff-bound Kansas City closer than anticipated and a win over the equally hopeless Arizona Cardinals, a Yuletide blowout felt like an accident waiting to happen in Denver.
A comedy screenwriter who accurately foresaw the disasters to come on the visitors' sideline ... complete with friendly fire between the offensive line and the backup quarterback ... probably would've been forced into revisions due to lack of subtlety.
The Hackett trope of poor clock management certainly didn't come into play on Sunday but the regression of Russell Wilson certainly did. One can easily say that the Rams (5-10) simply took advantage of a downtrodden opponent the same way a pedestrian scoops up an abandoned $100 bill.
But it's perfectly acceptable to believe in even the tiniest bit of Christmas magic on the Rams' side: for one thing, beating up on a somewhat formidable (if not egregiously tired) Denver defense is a much-welcome step in the right direction from an offensive perspective.
Cam Akers finally allowed the rushing attack to break the century mark and Baker Mayfield provided another hint that he could be the quarterback of the future. Sunday fulfilled Akers' prophecy that the Rams, unburdened by the always-ludicrous notion of tanking, would treat their final three games as if they were championship opportunities.
Los Angeles has a decision to make as to how it's going to play its quarterback hand, especially with so much sent away for the injured Matthew Stafford. But if they're going to have any hope for an immediate turnaround, they need to have some form of reliable insurance ... i.e. contingency plans behind Bryce Hopkins and John Wolford ... behind him. Time will tell if Mayfield seeks pastures more promising of starting opportunities, but it was hard to deny that chemistry he was building on Sunday.
In either case, it's certainly an improvement over Mayfield's last Christmas, which was likely the nail in the coffin of his Cleveland career.
The mere capitalizing on opportunities comes at a too-little, too-late juncture of the Rams' season, but Sunday proved that whatever rebuild awaits the Rams ... be it a full-on embracing or a hybrid type that'll allow them to linger upon the cusp of contention ... there's a way to get through with some of the pieces they already have. Either way, there's something to, perhaps bizarrely, play for over the Rams' final contests.
Of course, the ultimate tests of that theory could come over the next two weeks, when the Rams graduate to competition that has a chance to play beyond them. The first of those opportunities comes this Sunday afternoon when a SoFi Stadium civil war ensues on New Year's Day (1:25 p.m. PT, CBS) before concluding in the season final weekend against the Seattle Seahawks.
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