Rams QB Matthew Stafford shares praise for the Seahawks: “They’ve got a great roster top to bottom”
The Los Angeles Rams and the Seattle Seahawks meet for the third time this season and the winner from Lumen Field will be heading to the Super Bowl.
The Seattle Seahawks and the Los Angeles Rams are plenty familiar which one and other. That doesn’t mean they like each other, but there is a mutual respect between the two teams and Rams QB Matt Stafford spoke about that leading up to Sunday’s NFC Championship game.
MVP candidate vs top defense
The Rams and Seahawks split the season series with the Rams winning the first match up in LA and the Seahawks taking care of business on their home field. LA picked off Sam Darnold four times in the first match up but still almost won on a Jayson Myers 61 yard field goal that came up just short. The Rams were up big in Seattle, but let a fourth quarter lead slip through their fingers and ended up losing in overtime.
Stafford knows the Rams are going up against one of the best teams in the league and told Jim Gray on the Let’s Go! Podcast that their defense is one of the toughest in the league. “As good a defense as we faced all year,” he said. “They’ve got four guys they rotate on the outside, on edge rushers. They’ve got guys in the middle that are really, really talented players. Second-level players are great. Ernest Jones IV is having a hell of a year. And then in the secondary, they’re long and fast and aggressive. It’s a swarming group.”
The Seahawks finished the regular season as the best scoring defense in the NFL. They gave up a league low 17.2 points a game in the regular season and last week they gave up just six points against the San Francisco 49ers. This week, they will face a Rams team that finished top in the league in scoring offense.
12th man vs. Rams
LA isn’t just the best scoring offense with 30.5 points a game, they put up the most yards per game with 394.6 yards per game during the regular season. They scored 34 against the Carolina Panthers in the Wild Card round, and then put up 20 in an OT win in Chicago.
This is going to be the fourth time a top scoring offense meets a top scoring defense in a Championship game. The bad news for the Rams is the top offense are 0-4 against the top defenses in conference championships or in Super Bowls since 1990. Two of those games were won by the Seattle Seahawks Legion of Boom in 2014 when they beat Green Bay in the NFC Championship and the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl.
Not only will the Rams be battling history, they will be battling one of the toughest venues to play in maybe in the entire NFL. “Oh, man, it’s tough,” Stafford said of playing at Lumen Field. “It is as good an atmosphere as there is in football. I can’t imagine the NFC Championship not just exceeding those expectations. They do a great job of creating that home-field advantage. And you gotta go play in the elements there with their crowd and all that goes along with it but really, you’re playing against the guys on the grass and that’s as talented a football team as you’ll see in the NFL. They’ve got a great roster top to bottom. I think they’re really well coached. They play fast and physical.”
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