If you're anything like me, you've had this Thursday night circled since early May when the schedule was released.
Believe me, I want to see the 2024 Los Angeles Rams win the division and make a deep postseason run. Now that they've upset the Buffalo Bills, the big picture ambitions are very real again.
But other than a playoff game, the opportunities don't get any better than Week 15. There's meaningful football in December, and then there's December football that just means more.
A chance to win a third straight, knock out your bitter rival, and keep your closing kick in gear?
These are the three-hour adrenaline rushes we'll be pining for all offseason.
Bills to Pay
Before we dig into the Thursday Night matchup, let's not rush past what was an all-timer last Sunday in Inglewood.
The good news about a short week is there's no time to read your press clippings, I guess. But the unfortunate part is that it would normally take a full week to digest everything we witnessed in Week 14 and some of the historic takeaways.
We did our best to recap a few on this week's Between the Horns with D'Marco Farr and Stu Jackson.
Name A More Iconic Duo
Part of the reason we focused on the contributions of Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp in that episode is that they were not active for the Week 3 win over San Francisco (neither was Deebo Samuel or George Kittle, to be fair).
In fact, the Rams tandem has yet to play together against the 49ers. Furthermore, Kupp has been on the sideline for the last three rivalry games, and has not faced the 49ers since 2022. And while his 2021 NFC Championship performance was unforgettable – 11 receptions, 142 yards, two touchdowns – Kupp's last regular season win against San Francisco?
Week 3, 2017 on Thursday Night Football at Levi's Stadium. That was his rookie season. He only played 38 snaps (58 percent of the Rams plays) and caught both targets for 17 yards.
Time flies, but our appreciation for Kupp only grows.
Duty Bound
The Rams are on a two-game special teams winning streak, outperforming their competition in the third phase the last two Sundays in wins against the Saints and Bills.
One of the core contributors in the kicking game is tight end Hunter Long, who scored his first NFL touchdown on a 22-yard return off the punt that Jacob Hummel blocked.
You might remember Long as part of the 2023 Jalen Ramsey trade. But what I was not aware of is that he builds computers, codes, and takes names playing Call of Duty.
This was a Rams Revealed episode unlike any other.
Purdy Good
Alright, now to the 49ers.
And in the 150th regular season edition of this rivalry, a chance to sweep San Francisco for the first time since 2018. And a chance to win three in a row against the team from up north for the first time since the Greatest Show on Turf (when the Rams won six in a row from 1999-2001)!
They're coming off a 38-13 blowout over Chicago, in which they out-gained the Bears 320 yards to 4 in the first half on their way to snapping a three-game losing skid.
The San Francisco defense got disruptive force Talanoa Hufanga back at safety, could layer in Dre Greenlaw (Achilles) at linebacker this week, and potentially return 2022 Defensive Player of the Year Nick Bosa (hip, oblique) to the edge.
On offense, left tackle Trent Williams' status (ankle) bears monitoring. Even without star skill players Brandon Aiyuk and Christian McCaffrey (on injured reserve), expect these Niners to be urgent and desperate – knowing this is a must-win for their playoff hopes.
And after he torched the Rams for 11 catches, 175 yards, and three scores at SoFi in September, there's still the matter of Jauan Jennings to resolve.
The 49ers recaptured their screen game against Chicago, a dimension which has tormented the Rams defense this season. San Francisco has dominated the yards-after-catch game for most of Kyle Shanahan's tenure, leading that category from 2018-2023. But for a variety of reasons, it's evaporated in 2024 – until now, just in time to test LA's fundamentals.
As just one more measure of how capable these Niners can be, consider this incredible note from NFL Research. The 49ers point margin on the season is perfectly even – they've given up exactly as many points (308) as they've scored. However, the 49ers have gained 1,040 total yards more than their foes in 2024. The only team with a more profound yardage advantage is Philadelphia. The Eagles are 11-2.
The last team to have at least a positive 1,000-yard margin without having a positive point differential was the 2012 Lions, led by? You guessed it, Matthew Stafford.
QB One Two
It's no wonder the Rams (44) and 49ers (38) both set season highs for points scored in Week 14. ESPN reports that two of the five highest Total QBR in a game this season came from Stafford (97.6) and Purdy (97.1) last Sunday. Those were both career-high figures, including playoff games, for the top pick in 2009 and Mr. Irrelevant in 2022.
Both quarterbacks seem to love December. Purdy is 10-2 as a starter in the regular season's closing stretch with a 116.8 passer rating. The Rams are 10-1 in December games started by Stafford since trading for him in 2021. (And he was nails in the only loss, too, the 37-31 overtime defeat at Baltimore last year.) According to league research, Stafford is top five in the NFL in yards per game, touchdown-to-interception ratio, and passer rating in December since becoming a Ram.
Next Level
One of the best parts about TNF is feeling the full force of Prime Video and Next Gen Stats applied to the Rams matchup. And their preview did not disappoint when it came to analytics. Here were a couple of my research favorites, via NFL Pro.
Despite missing the better part of four games, Kupp has traveled 2,366 yards in pre-snap motion this season, over 300 more than any other receiver. That's more than a mile on the move! Kupp has been sent in motion on 47.3 percent of plays, the only wide receiver over 40 percent. The Rams have utilized motion on a league-high 82.9 percent of snaps.
But LA is also breaking a few tendencies, now that their best offensive line arrangement has some time on task together. You may have noticed that the Rams used empty formations on nearly 10 percent of plays in Week 14 against the Bills, a season high. Stafford completed all seven attempts while alone in his backfield for 97 yards and two touchdowns.
What felt so fulfilling about the win over Buffalo is that it reassured us that, at their best, the 2024 Rams have multiple ways to win games. We've seen them do it with their defense through the middle of the schedule. We watched them run the rock to victory in New Orleans. And last Sunday reassured us that McVay and Stafford are still going to be a tough out.
Watching the West
As you know, the Rams will play each of their division rivals once during this closing stretch, and all four teams in the NFC West still have a path to the title.
Let's start with the division-leading Seattle Seahawks (8-5). The Rams are still the last team to beat them, back in Week 9 before their bye. They're 3-0 since. Week 15 has the Green Bay Packers traveling to Lumen Field for Sunday Night Football. Then the Seahawks finish home to Minnesota, at Chicago, and at SoFi Stadium against the Rams in what (hopefully) will be a winner-take-all finale.
Conversely, the Arizona Cardinals (6-7) are winless since their bye, with two of those losses to the Seahawks. The Cardinals' final four looks like this: home to New England, at Carolina, at LA, and versus San Francisco.
As for the Niners, they can win out and still not make the playoffs. San Francisco travels to Miami next week, hosts Detroit, and makes that trip to Phoenix in an attempt to string together a five-game winning streak to salvage their division and NFC title defense. It's up to the Rams to extinguish that ambition.
