Even more so than their upset win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, the Los Angeles Rams have been in the news for other reasons.
Set to take on the San Francisco 49ers at SoFi Stadium in the NFC Championship Game next weekend, the Rams attempted to limit ticket sales to the greater Los Angeles area. The idea is to avoid a take over of 49ers fans in Southern California, much like we saw during San Francisco’s play-clinching Week 18 win.
While these limitations have since been scrapped, the Rams and their fans are still getting trolled. This time, it comes via an edit on the SoFi Stadium Wikipedia page. It’s all sorts of epic.
Notice the opening? “SoFi Stadium (AKA Levi’s South.” That’s a reference to the 49ers’ home stadium of Levi’s in Santa Clara.
To be clear, there’s a reason for this trolling. One can easily say that 49ers fans represented 80% of those who attended the aforementioned Week 18 game.
Matthew Stafford’s wife, Kelly, even touched on it following the Los Angeles Rams’ overtime loss.
“I have never seen so many of the opposing team’s fans at a game. We came from Detroit. There were a lot of good traveling teams there, but that was wild,” Kelly Stafford said. “Matthew was on a silent count, Jimmy Garoppolo was not. It was crazy. It made it very hard for us, because I guess we weren’t expecting to be going silent count.”
Will the Los Angeles Rams be facing a road crowd for NFC Championship Game?
It’s certainly been a topic of discussion on the social media world. That includes the wife of Rams tackle Andrew Whitworth offering to buy up tickets rather than fans selling their seats to 49ers fans. This is a real thing that happened.
We’re not sure if that’s going to work.
“It’s going to be a sea of red again. Rams fans are growing, but they aren’t paying $600 for nosebleed tickets. Not happening,” one ticket broker told Arash Markazi of ESPN Radio recently.
The on-field impact could be real here. If Stafford is forced to go to a silent count at home, it could lead to some pre-snap penalties and issues with blocking assignments. We saw that back in Week 18 when he was sacked five time and hit a total of 14 times as San Francisco erased a 17-0 deficit to win in overtime.
As of Monday afternoon, the Rams found themselves as 3.5-point favorites this game. The winner will take on either the Cincinnati Bengals or Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVI at this very same SoFi Stadium on February 13.
More must-reads: