A year ago, the Eagles exacted a little Super Bowl revenge on the Patriots. Are the underdog Los Angeles Rams primed to do the same?
Regrets? Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner certainly has some in regards to his second Super Bowl appearance 17 seasons ago at the Superdome. The then-St. Louis Rams were expected to handle the upstart New England Patriots.
But Bill Belichick’s team would escape with a memorable 20-17 win. And Warner made it quite clear that the Pats were the better team that day (via Phil Perry of NBC Sports/Boston):
All I know is that for those 60 minutes they outplayed us. We had opportunities that we made mistakes. I made mistakes. It think that’s the most disappointing part of the game. When you get to this stage and you play that 60 minutes, you just wanna play your best football. You want the best football team to win. I think that’s the disappointing part.
While Belichick and Tom Brady are back to face the Rams for a second time on the big stage, this is a totally new version of the NFC West champions. And it’s the reigning dynasty from Foxborough that is expected to walk away with a sixth Lombardi Trophy on Sunday as the Patriots are a slight favorite to win Super Bowl LIII. So could there be a form of role reversal that plays in the Rams’ favor? Warner doesn’t rule it out.
Now you flip it. The other team now is the team everyone’s trying to knock off. You got a young upstart team, that maybe if they can win this game and find a way, they can kinda flip it and become that next team that everyone’s trying to beat.
It’s very interesting if you think about it. The Los Angeles Rams have a chance to do what the Philadelphia Eagles managed a year ago at Minneapolis. More than a decade after falling in Super Bowl XXXIX to the Patriots, the Birds got the win. Like Doug Pederson was in ‘17, Sean McVay is in his second season as the head coach of his team. A Rams’ victory would make for a bit of bizarre symmetry.