TAMPA — Sean McVay was in sweats for the long overnight flight back to California and recalled a conversation he and I had as his Rams were wrapping the offseason program and breaking for summer. Just then, his quarterback came up the tunnel, and the Rams’ coach, who turns 36 Monday, smiled and told Matthew Stafford we were recalling a certain moniker he’d given his team captain seven months ago.
Stafford knew the one.
“To me, when you just see that dude, in crunch time, divisional game, going on the road, they tie it up after you have a huge lead, no flinch, no blink?” McVay said, standing on a wall halfway between the locker room and the team bus. “He was a bad mother—— in that situation.”
Over perhaps the greatest playoff weekend in NFL history, Stafford justified his coach’s words and all the faith that McVay put in him over the last year.
And when it mattered most? Stafford was a bad mother—— indeed.
The Rams’ offense had turned the ball over four times. L.A. had blown a 27–3 lead. The greatest quarterback of Stafford’s, or any other, era was on the other sideline, and a Rams team that spent the previous year stacking bold roster decisions like they were Jenga pieces was staring at the prospect of the whole thing crashing down in spectacular fashion.
In the middle of it all was the quarterback McVay pushed the Rams to acquire to compete with the Tom Bradys of the world. The quarterback who hadn’t won much in Detroit but who the coach believed was the right triggerman to raise the ceiling for everyone in Los Angeles. It was almost a year to the day that McVay and Stafford, and their significant others, toasted to that new start under the moon in Cabo.
On this night, in the champs’ house with 35 seconds left and no timeouts, Stafford gave McVay something new to raise his glass to—and showed the world just how bad he can be.
The Rams, 30–27 winners over the Buccaneers, are one step away from the Super Bowl. And what they look capable of now was vividly on display over those inexplicable 35 seconds that somehow trumped the wild 59 minutes preceding them, and it was on display because of Stafford and the coach who knew how good he could be.
