Los Angeles Rams’ Arrogance Leads To Week One Loss

It’s not hard to see how the Rams’ ego has inflated to this degree. They made the move back to LA, built a beautiful stadium after convincing the Chargers to come along as a secondary player, and flooded the roster with superstars. They’ve become the TikTok influencer who believes their impact is much larger than it actually is, creating a false sense that they can do no wrong.

LA’s plan for the Australia game showed their arrogance in real time. They dominated the Jaguars in London last season, so obviously they had the international games figured out. They treated a 15-hour flight and 18-hour time difference the same as the six-hour one. How could it be any different? It’s not like they spent the whole week in Baltimore before flying to London to break up the trip.

It’s ego, hubris, arrogance, bravado, cockiness, or any other word someone can come up with. It’s not hard to realize there should be adjustments for those types of variables. Anybody who has made that trip will say it’s brutal, but the Rams had success once, so their process had to be right. They even had reports come out that they were tracking data on the 15 staffers they sent over ahead of time as a ploy to show off how smart they were being.

Los Angeles put all that work in to make themselves feel good just to get blown out by 20. They pulled Stafford in the fourth quarter in his first game since winning MVP. Garrett broke the single-season sack record last year, but this was his first game with no QB hits or pressures since 2018. The last seven months have been a football version of Icarus, and last night they flew too close to the Sun.

Wake Up Call

One game doesn’t immediately tell the story of the full season for the Rams, but it did expose some issues with their psychology. They will probably still be great, make the playoffs, and contend for a Super Bowl. They just need to remember that they are not bigger than the sport. The Patriots brought in Randy Moss, broke records, and were undefeated, but couldn’t win the big one. The Eagles had Reggie White and Jerome Brown on the same team and never took home a Lombardi.

LA has fallen for themselves. Hollywood has made them inflate their self-perception. Their “F Them Picks” ideology has worked, but not enough to have their current level of confidence. They can force their importance all they want, but Kansas City has more championships; small markets Green Bay and Pittsburgh are bigger national brands, and Dallas is the most valuable franchise.

The Rams are at a crossroads. They have ten days until they get the Giants on Monday Night Football back home in Inglewood. They can stay in love with themselves and hope that confidence carries them, or they can look in the mirror, recognize their faults, and remember they have to fight. Football isn’t like other sports. This isn’t the Warriors adding Kevin Durant to an already loaded roster that can only lose to an Achilles and an ACL. Talent on the gridiron has to learn to work together; it can’t be driven by ego.