The Rams will face the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC championship game Sunday in Seattle, seeking to advance to the Super Bowl for the first time since their 2021 championship season.
The game is a matchup of the NFL’s best offensive and defensive teams. The Rams averaged a league-high 30.5 points per game while the Seahawks allowed a league-low 17.2 points.
“I think they have great personnel,” Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford said. “When you look at it top to bottom, they’ve got depth, they’ve got `star power guys’ that are really huge difference makers within games. I think they’re really well-coached.”
Linebacker Ernest Jones, who played for the Rams from 2021-23, “is playing at an all-time level and playing great in the middle,” Stafford said. “He’s running the show for those guys. The front’s great, the secondary is great. They’re a really well-rounded defense.”
Since the NFL-AFL merger went into effect in the 1970 season, creating the NFC and AFC championship games, there were two other times the top offense faced the top defense in a conference championship game.
The top defense won both previous times — the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Dallas Cowboys, 20-7, in the 1980 NFC championship game and the Seahawks defeated the Green Bay Packers, 28-22, in the 2014 NFC championship game, the most recent time Seattle played in the Super Bowl.
The teams split their two regular-season games, with the home team winning both times.
The Rams won 21-19 Nov. 16 at SoFi Stadium with Jason Myers’ 61-yard field goal attempt as time expired falling short.
Seattle won 38-37 Dec. 18 at Lumen Field, rallying from a 30-14 deficit with touchdowns and 2-point conversions with 8:03 and 6:23 left in regulation and winning on a touchdown and 2-point conversion in overtime after the Rams had regained a seven-point lead.
The Rams reached the NFC championship game with two road victories over higher-seeded teams. The Rams were 12-5 in the regular season, which gave them the No. 5 seed in the NFC. They defeated the fourth-seeded Carolina Panthers, 34-31, in a wild-card round game Jan. 10 and the second-seeded Chicago Bears, 20-17, in overtime, in a divisional round game last Sunday.
The Seahawks are the top seed in the NFC after winning the NFC West with a 14-3 record, receiving a bye in the wild-card round. They defeated the sixth-seeded San Francisco 49ers, 41-6, in a divisional round game last Saturday.
Oddsmakers have made the Rams a 2 1/2-point underdog.
ESPN Analytics’ matchup predictor gives Seattle a 53.8% chance of winning, the Rams a 46.2% chance.
Stafford led the NFL with 4,707 passing yards and 46 touchdown passes this season. A victory Sunday would make him the sixth player in NFL history to lead the league in both passing yards and touchdown passes and make the Super Bowl in the same year.
The others are Tom Brady (2007 with New England), Patrick Mahomes (2022 with Kansas City) and Pro Football Hall of Famers Peyton Manning (2013 with Denver), Dan Marino (1984 with Miami) and Kurt Warner (2001 with the St. Louis Rams).
A watch party will be held at SoFi Stadium, with gates opening at 2 p.m. for the 3:30 p.m. game. Tickets are $5 for season ticket members and $10 the general public.
All proceeds will go to the Rams Foundation, the team’s charitable arm, which “aims to inspire change with a focus on providing access and opportunity, driving equity and fighting for equality for all Angelenos,” according to the team.
The game will be televised by Fox, broadcast in English on ESPN 710 and in Spanish on Tu Liga Radio, 1330 AM.
The winner will face the winner of Sunday’s AFC championship game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots, which will be played earlier Sunday in Denver, in the Super Bowl, which will be played Feb. 8 in Santa Clara.
The NFC championship game comes one day after Rams coach Sean McVay’s 40th birthday.
“I’m not a big birthday guy and if you guys say happy 40th, I’ll slap you,” McVay said Friday in his last meeting with reporters before the game. “I’m not a big birthday guy. Here’s what I will say. What is a good birthday is when I’m working on my birthday and if I’m working next week, that would be a hell of a birthday. That’s the only present I want.”