Super Bowl LIII: The Hater’s Guide to the Los Angeles Rams

(Editor’s Note: the following is not intended to be taken seriously, at all.)

L.A., come in! Great to see you again so soon. Was getting absolutely manhandled and stuffed in a locker by a class-of-the-league Boston team already within the last three months not enough for you?

And now you come at us with...the Rams?

THAT’S the best you can do?

The entire league, and really, the entire continental United States is like GOD I’M SO SICK OF THE DIRTY SCUM CHEATER PATRIOTS WILL SOMEONE PLEASE BEAT THEM IN THE PLAYOFFS FOR ONCE

.....and this is what you come up with?

Actually, now that I think about it, Rams fans are probably still too busy complaining about 2001 conspiracy theories to even be nervous yet.

Eric Dickerson - pictured above as that one buddy that swears up and down they were on that awesome spring break road trip with you guys, but everybody knows you graduated two years ago.

Credit where credit is due, though: it’s a legitimate testament to the legendary, world-renowned trademark sleaziness of your new hometown of L.A. when Nickell Roby-Coleman’s blatant headshot against the Saints that’d make Vontaze Burfict proud is somehow the LEAST trashy thing about you.

Starting right here: we were told you guys in the City of Angels love a winner?

Then explain this:

More people in LA watched the Patriots than the Rams in the conference championships

What, did the Rams game start too early on Sunday to shake off your hangover with a $78 mimosa and avocado toast?

Actually, that makes perfect sense, now that you guys probably all had to trade in all of your Miami Heat LeBron James jerseys for Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Might as well watch the greatest dynasty in the history of the game while you’re busy tanning!

The only REAL fan you guys have is Halle Berry, and even that may be a stretch.

You gotta hand it to Halle, though - just by knowing what an audible is, she already knows more about football than probably 80% of LA and 95% of the dudes in LA.

Ndamukong Suh: yup, still trash

Alexa, is Ndamukong Suh still a leg-stomping cold sore in the mouth of humankind that’d break his own mother’s collarbone if it set the other team back 0.3 yards?

Survey says....oh, that was a serious question? Does Chipotle still destroy your bathroom the next day? Does LeBron still make passive-aggressive Instagram stories? Does queso still make everything better? Does a studio apartment in LA still cost as much as a year at Duke??

The world would be a better place if you’d just go ahead and jump into real estate like you want to, Suh, although surely you’d find a way to stomp on someone there too.

Aqib Talib

Actually, never mind, Aqib rules. Carry on.

Your terrible owner ripped a team from a great sports town

It really, truly takes a lot for us hardy New Englanders to feel bad for St. Louis, who, not coincidentally, is another team Boston teams have historically barbecued on the biggest stage, like this....

....and this!

....and OH! Can’t forget this!

Ah, memories...this must be what it’s like to look back through your high school yearbook if you were actually popular and good at sports or something.

....but good god, if there was ever a man that’s enough of a combination of Gordon Gekko, Scarface, and every bad guy from Captain Planet to make New England collectively go “Damn, even St. Louis doesn’t deserve THIS”...it’s this Bond villain right here.

Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

Well, Bond villain or associate vice president of product development at Initech, I guess.

It’s already heartbreaking enough to watch your team pack up shop and move to a bigger city in a blatant cash-grab sellout, and then this soulless piece of rotting foie gras told St Louis they were too poor and they could all go cry into their saltine-cracker pizza because he didn’t need them anymore.

You know what, though? Let’s let Stan tell you himself, because fairness:

“St. Louis lags, and will continue to lag, far behind in the economic drivers that are necessary for sustained success of an NFL franchise.”

“St. Louis Is Not A Three Professional Team Market.”

Q: “How do you feel about leaving St. Louis?”

Kroenke: “It truly is bittersweet. I grew up in Missouri, and there’s a lot of wonderful people in St. Louis and Missouri. I’ll always feel that way about Missouri. I never dreamed I’d be put in this position. But at the same time, you’re not going to sit there and be a victim.”

“Any NFL Club that signs on to this proposal (from Missouri to keep the Rams),” the application says, “will be well on the road to financial ruin, and the League will be harmed.”

Got that? The man who’s worth $8.5 billion dollars and owns Arsenal in the English Premier League, the now-Los-Angeles Rams, the Colorado Avalanche, and the Denver Nuggets isn’t going to just sit there and be VICTIMIZED by *checks notes* his football team playing smack dab in the middle of downtown St. Louis in his hometown state when he could be printing even MORE money somewhere else.

Robert Kraft is an absolute saint for getting through any NFL owner’s meeting without slapping this guy upside his head with a hockey stick any time he opens his mouth.

You guys needed to get Brandin Cooks from us before you even sniffed the Super Bowl

Fun fact: while Tom Brady and New England re-set the Super Bowl passing record in February 2018 mostly without Brandin Cooks, the L.A. Rams couldn’t put up more than 13 points in the playoffs last year without him.

Observe!

^The real miracle there is that someone somehow got 8 minutes of highlights out of that game.

13 points, against basically the same Falcons defense that Tom Brady wreaked unspeakable terrors on while leading a 31-point comeback. Yikes.

But hey, all your draft picks can’t be Cooper Kupps, right, so why not strike a friendly deal for a BAMF wide receiver with the team you know is basically the final boss in the AFC and very well may be the team you see in the Super Bowl *if* you somehow make it that far? What could possibly go wrong!

And look at the results - Jared Goff threw for almost 1,000 yards more than he did in 2017, tossed about 70 more complete passes, his completion percentage went up almost 3%, and he threw 4 more touchdowns!

Now peep Brandin Cooks’ numbers from this year:

1,204 yards, 80 receptions, 5 touchdowns, 68.4% catch percentage.

Probably just a coincidence.

The Rams were *supposed* to beat the Patriots by 14 points in 2001

For those of you who aren’t gamblers among us, first of all, congratulations on actually keeping all your money, and second, here’s what this means:

The Greatest Show on Turf, with MVP and all-time great Kurt Warner slinging the rock and a receiving corps so loaded even your Madden Ultimate Team is like DAAAAAAAAAAAANG BRO, were supposed to beat this pathetic little bunch of dorks with a sixth-round rookie QB and a kicker that played for NFL Europe that aren’t even from a real city by two or more touchdowns.

TL;DR - this game was supposed to be a BLOODBATH. A boat race. And basically a three-hour coronation for the greatest offense in NFL history! For reference purposes, in the 2013-2014 season when the Denver Broncos and Peyton Manning smashed all the records the ‘07 Patriots set, they were favored by 2.5 in the Super Bowl.

And then you get hit in the mouth a few times, throw a few picks, and leave Tom Brady A FULL MINUTE AND 30 SECONDS on the clock in the 4th quarter, and every last Ram on that team will swear up and down that they got cheated out of a championship.

To quote the immortal Sean Connery, losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and...well, you know.

The Rams somehow COMPLETELY screwed up their massive treasure chest of picks from the RGIII trade

File this one under the same category as my all-time favorite Belichick-in-a-nutshell line:

“Bill Belichick is smart, but sometimes he succeeds merely by aiding other team’s efforts to be stupid”

Imagine, if you will: you’ve already drafted Sam Bradford at quarterback with the first overall pick and paid him the biggest rookie contract ever. Then, your abysmal 2-14 season nets you the 2nd overall pick in the 2012 draft. THEN, a team even dumber than you calls you up, basically gives you a blank check for the #2 pick and says “name your price”.

Now imagine having three first-rounders and a second-rounder AND a couple other dumb teams (sup Cowboys?) just dying to trade up and let you rack up even MORE picks to build your team into a decade-long NFC powerhouse and doing...this?

I legitimately am at a loss for what’s more impressive - the strikeouts, or the “even a broken clock is right twice a day” finally drafting someone good and then...trading them or just letting them go to free agency.

We did get this magically delicious moment out of it, though, so, chin up, kids, there’s always that.

Jared Goff is a system QB

Something we here a lot around these (frozen) parts is that a TRULY GREAT quarterback is transcendent enough that no matter what coach or offensive scheme they play in, they rise above and post rockstar season after rockstar season, leaving defense after defense sobbing and begging for mercy.

Peyton Manning, they say. Great no matter where he played.

Brett Favre. Same.

Heck, Michael Vick did it with his arm and his wheels.

(Hey, don’t get mad at us. We’re not the ones who looked at Mike Vick in 2009 like “You know what, you’re cool, let’s just bury the hatchet”)

The Goffster, on the other hand...oh boy. Where to begin?

2016: 1,089 yards, 5 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, 54.6% completion percentage

(To be fair, he didn’t start until November, but still. WOOF.)

Sean McVay and his baller-in-2013 haircut show up: Heard you guys needed a coach?

2017 Goff: 3,804 yards, 28 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, 62.1% completion percentage

2018 Goff: 4,688 yards, 32 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, 64.9% completion percentage

Sorry Jared, you’re doing great and everything, but nobody will believe you are TRULY ELITE because all your fantasy-gold numbers are obviously the Sean McVay system giving you easy throws every single down that basically let you play Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl football every week, that’s how this works. Just ask the ultimate system quarterback, Tom Brady. I mean, Tom Brady hasn’t even beaten all 32 NFL teams. SMH.

Last but certainly not least....GOOD GOD THAT’S GUNNER THE SAINTS FAN’S MUSIC!

To try and restore some sense of balance to the Force, we enlisted the services of Gunner the Saints Fan, who’s been kicked in the dick by unfathomable last-minute shenanigans for the past two years in a row. The man made an entire pot of legit home-recipe crawfish gumbo and bought enough Airheads to feed a pee-wee soccer team, and then the universe goes and...well, you know.

Take it away, Gunner!

Hi Pats Pulpit, my name is Gunner and I’m a wallowing Saints fan. I’ve watched my team get bounced from the playoffs two years in a row in two of the most tragic and awful ways possible (except for this one, lolololol).

St. Louisians (??) everywhere are like “Whoa, all we had to do was fire Jeff Fisher and we could have had this?” *drinks bleach*.” The Rams were definitely the boring high-scoring offense this year. I was more interested in watching the Los Angeles Phillip Riverses than this team. How did they even make it to this game anyway? Oh yeah, I remember now. *pours bleach in eyes*

Please don’t make me listen to TOM BRADY/BILL BELICHICK OLD BUT JARED GOFF/SEAN MCVAY YOUNG ZOMGGG for 4 hours straight. Do you know how much it sucks to be constantly reminded that instead of finishing graduate school I could be coaching my own football team? Also, I kinda want Brandin Cooks to do well, but I also kind of want him to blow the game in a super dramatic way for some reason. Also Marcus Peters sucks…only monsters don’t like GUMBO GUMBO GUMBO. Get passed on for 900 yards and be the matchup that the Pats like, and then stfu.

Whatever, maybe I’m just jealous and sad (I am). I’m sure that the 37 Rams fans that exist in LA will have a real fun time half-paying attention to the game for 18 minutes before flaking on their party because they got invited to a better party, but New Orleans needed that win, man. Otherwise all we have to look forward to sports-wise is LSU holding Bama to a field goal on their first drive before proceeding to get blown out by 30. Also it came out today that Anthony Davis has asked for a trade (can’t blame the dude, btw, too bad) but he might go to the Lakers?? F*ck off LA sports, you suck. Leave us alone.

Like any good American I’m not interested in seeing the Pats win for the bazillionth time (dang you people…) but the alternative is…this friggin’ team? Really? They can’t even sell out a college stadium and are like the 5th most popular team in their city. Everything sucks, who dat.

Also, Hakim dropped the ball.

Who Dat Nation and Pats Nation, gatebreauxs for life, man. Gatebreauxs for life.

---

Oh, and one more thing...

IN-N-OUT Burger sucks

Oooooooooh, Animal Style!

Taking the most basic fast food and putting salad dressing on it, huh? A stoner in Burlington, Vermont could figure that one out.

Also, everyone else in the entire United States and most of Europe has cracked the code to at least C-minus French Fries except...for you. Do better.