The 2026 Rams are the closest thing we’ve had to a preseason superteam in several years. Sean McVay’s group was already a popular pick to win Super Bowl LXI before the offseason began. But then L.A. traded for Trent McDuffie and signed Jaylen Watson, shoring up the secondary at the expense of a potential Super Bowl opponent in the Chiefs. The move to draft Ty Simpson as Matthew Stafford’s successor struck a curious tone, but general manager Les Snead responded with the mother of all high-stakes moves, trading Jared Verse and three picks to the Browns for reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett.
Unsurprisingly, the Rams have become prohibitive favorites to win the Super Bowl after their aggressive moves this offseason. Picking any other team to win the Lombardi Trophy at this point would almost require coming up with some sort of explanation for what happened to the Rams along the way.
And yet, we have to look back only one year to remind ourselves how NFL seasons can play out entirely differently once players get on the field. In 2025, 68 ESPN personalities picked their AFC and NFC champions, along with an eventual Super Bowl winner, before the season kicked off. Not a single person picked the Seahawks or Patriots. I predicted the Chiefs and Packers, who combined for exactly zero playoff wins. Preseason darlings like the Chiefs, Lions and Commanders each missed the playoffs altogether.
Was 2025 just a weird year? And how often do heavily favorited superteams such as the 2026 Rams actually win the Super Bowl? I decided to take a more comprehensive look through history to get a sense of how confident we can be that Los Angeles will be the last team standing come Feb. 14.
To do so, I’m going to look at the 15 largest preseason favorites since 1990 and see how their seasons played out. I’ll be using the preseason odds compiled at Pro Football Reference from 1990 to 2025 and compare them with the odds posted for this season’s Super Bowl at DraftKings. The Rams have odds of +550 at DraftKings to win the Super Bowl, while nobody else in the league is shorter than +1000. After we adjust for the vigorish and convert the betting lines into probabilities, the Rams have an implied 12.5% chance of winning this season’s Super Bowl, putting them 5.1 percentage points ahead of the second-placed Bills and Ravens.
While the absolute number might be a better sense of how the market views a particular team, I’m going to use the latter figure to sort through our top 15 teams (well, 16, if we’re including the 2026 Rams). There were plenty of seasons in the 1990s where two or three superteams -- such as the 49ers and Cowboys -- were seen as significantly better than the rest of the competition. I want to get a sense of what it was like for the teams that truly separated from the pack before the season began, as appears to be the case for this Rams squad.
Did those teams hold up to their preseason expectations? Was the market overconfident about their chances? Let’s go team by team before using the lessons from those 15 earlier cases to talk about what it means for the 2026 Rams and their chances of winning McVay and Stafford their second title.
2017 New England Patriots
Implied odds: 19.8%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 11.5%
Result: Lost Super Bowl LII to the Eagles, 41-33
I wouldn’t have guessed that the 2017 Patriots stood out in terms of Super Bowl odds more than any other New England team from the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick era, but let’s contextualize this. The Pats were coming off that legendary 34-28 win over the Falcons in Super Bowl LI. Brady was getting Rob Gronkowski back from injury after the star tight end missed the playoff run with a back ailment, while Belichick added a new star receiver to the mix in Brandin Cooks. After a 14-2 season and with Brady motivated by the four-game suspension he took for the Deflategate scandal, you could understand why the Patriots were heavy favorites to repeat as champs.
Some things went as expected. Brady won the league MVP award. Cooks and Gronkowski each topped 1,000 yards. The Pats went 13-3 and took home the top seed in the AFC.
Others did not. Belichick’s team started 2-2 and needed a last-minute comeback win over a 4-12 Texans team to avoid opening the season 1-3. The Pats righted the ship quickly, but they were trailing by 10 points in the fourth quarter of the AFC title game and were down nearly three scores to the Jaguars, only for Myles Jack’s fumble recovery touchdown to be overturned. Two late touchdown passes to Danny Amendola controversially pushed the Pats into the Super Bowl.
There, well, nothing went as planned. The Patriots defense had quietly been a mess all year, finishing the regular season ranked 31st in DVOA. The offense covered up the weakness by holding on to the ball and getting out to early leads. The Eagles were heavy underdogs with backup quarterback Nick Foles in for the injured Carson Wentz, and you know what happened next. Brady threw for 505 yards and three touchdowns, still the record for an NFL quarterback in a losing effort, but the defense couldn’t stop Foles & Co. The Pats fell 41-33.
2007 New England Patriots
Implied odds: 20.9%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 10.5%
Result: Lost Super Bowl XLII to the Giants, 17-14
Are you sensing a trend? This was another Patriots team that rode offseason optimism about its offensive additions to high hopes before falling short in the Super Bowl. The 2006 Pats had blown a 21-3 lead to the Colts in the AFC Championship Game, but they also weren’t far removed from winning three titles between 2001 and 2004. Brady had improved as a quarterback over that time, and during the offseason, Belichick had rebuilt the offense by trading for Randy Moss and Wes Welker and signing Donte’ Stallworth.
What happened next is one of the more notable seasons in NFL history. The Pats were caught spying on the Jets during a 38-14 blowout victory in Week 1, turning a team that had been the underdog favorites during their win over the Rams in 2001 into the villains of the NFL. On the field, the Patriots blew defenses away with their spread attack, as Brady produced arguably the greatest season in league history under center. The Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season, winning their average game by nearly 20 points.
By the time the postseason came around, though, the cracks were beginning to show. Brady threw three picks in the AFC title game, but with Philip Rivers playing through a torn ACL and LaDainian Tomlinson limited by injury to three touches, the Chargers couldn’t take advantage in a 21-12 defeat. And in the Super Bowl, again as heavy favorites, the Patriots were upset by a Giants team that was able to control Brady in the pocket with its pass rush.
1996 San Francisco 49ers
Implied odds: 19.2%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 9.6%
Result: Lost in divisional round to the Packers, 35-14
The 49ers were the preseason favorites to win the Super Bowl in 1994, 1995 and 1996. Their status as the third team on this list might have more to do with a lack of competition in the AFC than anything else. The Bills were among the Super Bowl favorites earlier in the decade, but after a 7-9 season in 1994 and a 10-6 campaign in 1995, they had fallen back to the pack. The Steelers had advanced to the Super Bowl the prior season, but starting quarterback Neil O’Donnell had signed with the Jets in free agency, turning things over to 34-year-old Mike Tomczak as the team’s starter. And while the Chiefs were coming off a 13-win season, they had relied on a career year from journeyman QB Steve Bono and lost 10-7 to the Colts in the wild-card round.
While there was no sure thing in the AFC, the 49ers seemed like the reliable option in the NFC. Though they had been bounced by the Packers in the divisional round the year before, George Seifert’s team had won the Super Bowl in 1994. If the 49ers could make it past the Cowboys, who were the defending champs, they felt like an easy pick to win a Super Bowl against a random AFC opponent.
Well, the good news is they never needed to worry about the Cowboys, who went 10-6 and lost to the Panthers in the playoffs in Barry Switzer’s third year in charge. The team the 49ers did need to worry about, though, was the one that had beaten them the year before. The Packers beat their rivals in overtime during the regular season, which ended up giving Green Bay home-field advantage in the postseason. And when the two teams had a rematch at Lambeau in the NFC title game, Steve Young was already dealing with two broken ribs. The 49ers starter lasted two series, and after a Desmond Howard punt return opened the scoring, the Pack never looked back.
Mike Holmgren’s team won handily and then beat the Patriots by 14 points in the Super Bowl. We’re 0-for-3 on favorites taking home the hardware.
2002 St. Louis Rams
Implied odds: 15.7%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 7.8%
Result: Missed playoffs
Make that 0-for-4. Though Brady and the Patriots had upset the Rams in the prior year’s Super Bowl, the Rams were easy favorites to return to the title game the following year. St. Louis was returning reigning MVP Kurt Warner and all of his key playmakers. Lovie Smith’s defense had finished seventh in points allowed the prior season, leaving the “Greatest Show on Turf” with an expectation of dominance on both sides of the football.
That never came together, in part because of injuries. Warner played only seven games and was uncharacteristically poor when he was on the field, throwing 11 picks to just three touchdowns. DB Aeneas Williams and OT Orlando Pace -- All-Pros the prior year -- combined to miss 16 games. Marshall Faulk, who had finished second to Warner in MVP voting in 2001, lost nearly a full yard per carry off the previous year’s figure and never topped 1,000 rushing yards again. The Rams posted a minus-19 turnover margin and went 7-9, missing the playoffs entirely.
2009 New England Patriots
Implied odds: 18.2%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 7.1%
Result: Lost in wild-card round to the Ravens, 33-14
These have to be the shortest odds for a team that hadn’t even made it to the postseason the prior year, but there’s an easy explanation. The 2008 Patriots, who we’ll get to in a minute, had lost Tom Brady to a torn ACL in Week 1. Though that team ended up missing the playoffs, this felt like an opportunity to get another shot on backing a team that had come within one Asante Samuel interception of a perfect year in 2007.
While Brady was back and won Comeback Player of the Year, the legendary quarterback wasn’t his usual self. Several key players from the 2007 defense were no longer on the roster, and Belichick wasn’t able to coax the same sort of magic out of their replacements. The Pats went 10-6, losing Welker to a torn ACL during the final game of the season. New England still won the division and hosted the Ravens in the wild-card round, but running back Ray Rice scored an 83-yard touchdown on the first offensive snap of the game, Brady was strip-sacked to set up another short field, and the Ravens were up 24-0 before the end of the first quarter. The Pats got within two scores by the end of the third quarter, but a comeback wasn’t in the cards.
1997 Green Bay Packers
Implied odds: 18%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 6.5%
Result: Lost in Super Bowl XXXII to the Broncos, 31-24
Well, this one is simple, right? The Packers had steadily worked their way up the ranks in the NFC, dethroning the 49ers before finally winning the Super Bowl against the Patriots the year before. Brett Favre was in the prime of his career and coming off back-to-back MVP trophies. Nobody in the NFC Central had been within three games of the Pack the prior year, and while the Cowboys had beaten Green Bay six times over the prior three seasons, there were questions about whether the Dallas dynasty was fading.
As it turned out, the Cowboys weren’t a threat, as they fell to 6-10 in Switzer’s final year as coach. Favre won his third consecutive MVP award, splitting the honors with Barry Sanders. The Packers lost the top spot in the NFC to the 49ers on a tiebreaker, but Favre & Co. beat the Niners at Candlestick in the conference championship game, holding Young and the 49ers offense without a touchdown in the process.
The favorites in the AFC were the Broncos, though, and while there might have been some skeptics unwilling to back a team that had lost three times in the Super Bowl with John Elway under center, Denver turned out to be the best team in football. The Broncos led the league in scoring, blew out the Jaguars and then beat the rival Chiefs with their run game at Arrowhead. Terrell Davis outran Jerome Bettis and the Steelers defense in the AFC title game, and while the Packers were 11-point favorites in the Super Bowl, a 157-yard, three-touchdown performance from Davis and a legendary “helicopter” run from Elway were enough to get the legendary quarterback his first title.
1990 San Francisco 49ers
Implied odds: 14.3%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 6.3%
Result: Lost in NFC Championship Game to the Giants, 15-13
One of those Broncos losses in the Super Bowl with Elway had come to these 49ers the prior year, with Joe Montana throwing for five touchdowns in a 55-10 shellacking. In some of the final seasons before the salary cap truly changed football, the 49ers were able to bring back an absolutely stacked roster and were blessed with Hall of Famers on both sides of the football. They were attempting to become the first team to successfully win three consecutive Super Bowls and were heavy favorites to pull it off.
And for most of the year, the odds felt prescient. The 49ers started 10-0 before losing to the Rams, but a 7-3 win over the Giants helped lock up home-field advantage through the postseason. Montana’s 8-1 record at home in the playoffs suggested that nobody was going to have much hope of beating the 49ers before the Super Bowl.
The Giants, who were starting career backup Jeff Hostetler as eight-point underdogs at Candlestick, took that personally. They brutalized Montana, who eventually left the game with a bevy of injuries. Hostetler and the offense didn’t score a touchdown, but with the 49ers trying to run the clock out, a Roger Craig fumble with three minutes to go handed the Giants a short field. Matt Bahr’s fifth field goal of the game gave Bill Parcells’ team a 15-13 victory before going on to beat the Bills on a missed field goal by Scott Norwood in the subsequent Super Bowl.
2008 New England Patriots
Implied odds: 16.1%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 5.8%
Result: Missed playoffs
The 2008 Patriots understandably had better raw odds to win the Super Bowl than their 2009 brethren, but they didn’t enjoy as significant of a gap with the rest of the field. This team was coming off the 17-0 campaign, and their hopes were immediately dashed by Brady’s ACL tear in the season opener. Unheralded backup Matt Cassel took over and won 11 games, but for the first and only time in the 12-playoff team era, those 11 wins weren’t enough for the Pats to make it to the postseason. Our search continues.
2026 Los Angeles Rams
Implied odds: 12.5%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 5.1%
Result: TBD
Well, if you’re a Rams fan, this might be a little worrying. Every single team that was projected to be more dominant versus the rest of the competition than the 2026 Rams failed to win the Super Bowl. Some made it to the title game and came very close to winning, of course, but we’re currently 0-for-8. More on this season’s Rams in a bit ...
1995 San Francisco 49ers
Implied odds: 19.3%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 4.8%
Result: Lost in divisional round to the Packers, 27-17
After going up 42-10 in the prior year’s Super Bowl against the Chargers before winning by 23 points, you can understand why the 49ers were heavy favorites again in 1995. While the Niners had lost Deion Sanders to the rival Cowboys after one season in San Francisco, Dallas was stuck in an often-difficult NFC East. The 49ers were the kings of the NFC West, where no other team had posted a winning record in 1994.
The 1995 49ers faced a new problem for our superteams: They were unlucky. While they had the point differential of a 12.7-win team, the Niners won only 11 games, the product of a 2-5 record in games decided by seven points or less. Though they managed to beat the Cowboys and were in position to clinch home-field advantage in the NFC during the final week of the season, they lost 28-27 to a Falcons team that relied on backup quarterback Bobby Hebert for most of the game.
The loss dropped the 49ers to the second seed, so while they got a first-round bye, their opponents in Round 2 were the third-seeded Packers and soon-to-be MVP Favre. The 49ers couldn’t stop Favre, who threw for 299 yards and two touchdowns. For all its experience and playoff savviness, San Francisco turned the ball over four times in a 27-17 defeat.
2021 Kansas City Chiefs
Implied odds: 15.1%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 4.7%
Result: Lost in AFC Championship Game to the Bengals, 27-24
It’s our first Chiefs team from the Patrick Mahomes era. While Kansas City had lost to Brady and Tampa Bay in the prior year’s Super Bowl, the Chiefs returned many of the key players from a 14-2 team that had been perpetually competing for a Super Bowl from the moment Mahomes took over as the full-time starter in 2018. The only other AFC team in the top six of that year’s Super Bowl odds were the Bills, who couldn’t seem to get past Mahomes when things mattered most.
This wasn’t a dominant Chiefs team. It was badly blown out 38-20 by the Bills early in the season, then finished October with a losing record at 3-4. Of course, from that point forward, the Chiefs won 11 of their next 13 games, including a legendary shootout with the Bills in the divisional round.
The two losses were to the same team. The Bengals were nobody’s idea of a Super Bowl contender given that they had gone 4-11-1 and lost Joe Burrow to a torn ACL the prior season, but the addition of Ja’Marr Chase and significant investments on the defensive side of the ball quickly turned things around. The Bengals started 7-6, but they began to believe after beating the Chiefs in a 34-31 barn burner late in the season.
And while the Chiefs went up 21-3 on the Bengals in their conference championship rematch, a midgame gambit by defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo to drop eight into coverage flummoxed Mahomes and the Chiefs offense. Cincinnati scored the next 21 points to take the lead, and while Mahomes got the Chiefs in position to tie the game, he nearly blew the contest by taking an awful strip sack before the tying kick. A Mahomes interception in overtime handed the ball back to the Bengals, and an Evan McPherson field goal ended Kansas City’s hopes. We’re now 0-for-10!
1994 San Francisco 49ers
Implied odds: 18.4%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 4.6%
Result: Won Super Bowl XXIX over the Chargers, 49-26
Finally, the 1994 49ers team that we’ve discussed earlier bails out the favorites. This was a year that went mostly as planned from the preseason. The 49ers and Cowboys were the heavy favorites to win the Super Bowl, combining to capture more than 32% of the preseason market. They were two of the three teams to win 12 or more games; the other was the Steelers, who were upset by the Chargers in the AFC title game.
The season felt like it would come down to the 49ers-Cowboys matchups, and it did. The Niners hosted the Cowboys during the regular season and beat them 21-14 by forcing three Dallas turnovers. That win gave the Niners home-field advantage, and in the rematch, the 49ers forced five takeaways, including a 44-yard pick-six by Eric Davis to start the scoring. The Niners were up 21-0 before the end of the first quarter, turning the Cowboys into a one-dimensional team, and the game was never really a contest. And while we’ve written about a string of Super Bowl favorites getting upset in the big game, the 49ers were 19-point favorites against the Chargers and won by 23.
2019 New England Patriots
Implied odds: 15.9%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 4.5%
Result: Lost in wild-card round to the Titans, 20-13
The final year of the Brady era in New England got off to what looked to be an auspicious start. The Patriots were coming off another Super Bowl title after manhandling the Rams, and while there were concerns about Brady’s playmakers after Gronkowski retired, an opportunity appeared to be opening up as the season began. The Pats were favorites to sign Antonio Brown after his ill-fated stint with the Raiders, and one day before the season began, the Pats added the star wideout to their roster.
Brown played one game for the team before being cut after he was accused of off-field misconduct. The Patriots rode a historically dominant defense early in the season against a weak schedule of opponents, but a 37-20 loss to Lamar Jackson and the Ravens ended their hopes of another undefeated season. And down the stretch, the offense came undone. Top receiver Julian Edelman was clearly hobbled by the end of the season. Lead back Sony Michel failed to average 4 yards per carry. A Pats team that started 10-1 lost three of its final five games to land at 12-4 and missed out on a first-round bye.
It still felt like the Patriots might be able to piece together one more playoff run, but Derrick Henry’s breakout season continued into the playoffs, with the Titans star racking up 182 yards on 34 carries. The Patriots held Ryan Tannehill to 67 net passing yards, but Brady’s offense went 1-for-3 in the red zone. A pick-six by Brady on his final pass attempt in a Patriots uniform sealed a 20-13 victory for the Titans.
1998 Green Bay Packers
Implied odds: 18.3%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 4.1%
Result: Lost in wild-card round to the 49ers, 30-27
While the Packers had lost to the Broncos in the prior season’s Super Bowl, nobody was losing faith in Green Bay. Favre had won three consecutive MVP awards. Holmgren’s team had gone 13-3 and advanced to the Super Bowl each of the two prior campaigns. The only other team in the NFC to win more than 10 games in 1997 had been the 49ers, and the Packers had knocked them out of the playoffs in each of the prior three seasons. The Broncos were a threat, of course, but the Packers seemed set to run the NFC.
Favre had a very good season, but he threw 23 interceptions, up from an average of 14 across those three prior MVP campaigns. The Packers’ turnover margin flipped from even in 1997 to minus-11 in 1998. And they didn’t produce any sort of run game all season, with an injury to Dorsey Levens costing the offense dearly. The Pack averaged just 3.4 yards per carry, which ranked 29th in the league.
An unexpectedly dominant team also emerged in the NFC, as the Vikings installed Randall Cunningham at quarterback, had Moss fall into their laps in the first round and averaged nearly 35 points per game. The Vikings went 15-1 and won the NFC Central by four games, pushing the Packers into the wild-card round. And while they traveled to the Bay Area to face the 49ers again, their playoff dominance didn’t stick. Favre led a touchdown drive to take the lead with two minutes to go, but the defense couldn’t stop Young, who hit Terrell Owens for a 25-yard touchdown pass with eight seconds on the clock. “The Catch II” knocked the defending NFC champions out.
2018 New England Patriots
Implied odds: 18.7%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 3.9%
Result: Won Super Bowl LIII over the Rams, 13-3
The Patriots had lost to Foles’ Eagles in the Super Bowl the year before and traded Cooks to the Rams over the offseason, but they still had a deep secondary and the combo of Brady and Belichick running things. Adding Josh Gordon, who had managed a 1,646-yard season in 2013 before falling afoul of the league’s substance policy, hinted toward the possibility of a potentially rejuvenated passing game. And the only other team that had won more than 10 games in the AFC in 2017 was the Steelers, who had promptly been eliminated in the wild-card round by the Jaguars. The Patriots looked like they could be the class of the AFC.
They were ... although it wasn’t quite as clear-cut as it might have seemed. The Jags gained a measure of revenge in September for the conference title loss by beating the Pats 31-20 behind 376 passing yards and four touchdown passes from Blake Bortles. Belichick quickly turned things around after a 1-2 start, but the Chiefs were emerging as title contenders behind second-year quarterback Mahomes, who won league MVP in his first year as a starter.
The Patriots beat the Chiefs 43-40 in October when Kansas City couldn’t find an answer for Gronkowski in key spots. The rematch in the AFC title game was at Arrowhead, but even after a pair of lead changes in the final minute, the Patriots won the coin toss in overtime and scored a touchdown on the only drive of the extra quarter. They earned a trip to the Super Bowl, where their 6-1 front flummoxed McVay and Jared Goff of the Rams. The Pats didn’t do much on offense either, but they found one concept that worked against the Rams and ran it three times for the game-deciding score.
2001 St. Louis Rams
Implied odds: 12.6%
Gap to the rest of the NFL: 3.6%
Result: Lost Super Bowl XXXVI to the Patriots, 20-17
And we finish up with another Rams loss to the Patriots in the Super Bowl. After winning the Super Bowl in 1999, the Rams fell to 10-6 in 2000 and failed to win a playoff game. The reason seemed clear: Warner had missed five games, and the Rams had gone 2-3 with Trent Green under center. The defense was atrocious, allowing more than 29 points per contest. The front office made significant changes by hiring Lovie Smith and signing star cornerback Aeneas Williams. A Rams team with a healthy quarterback and an improved defense might be impossible to stop.
For most of the season, that seemed right. The Rams started 6-0, finished 14-2 and led the league in most offensive categories. Warner and Faulk finished one-two in the MVP race. The defense improved from 31st in points allowed to seventh. The playoffs went through St. Louis, and comfortable victories over the Packers and Eagles as 11-point favorites seemed to reaffirm the hype. With an overmatched Patriots team led by an inexperienced, injured quarterback waiting in the Super Bowl, the Rams seemed set to be anointed as one of the great teams of the modern era.
Well, they had one weakness. Warner and the offense had turned the ball over 44 times. They lost the turnover battle in the Super Bowl 3-0, with Ty Law returning one interception for a score before a second fumble recovery touchdown was waved off by a Patriots holding call. The Rams still had enough to tie the score at 17 with 1:30 to go, but against the protests of John Madden on commentary, Belichick trusted that inexperienced quarterback to take a shot at driving down the length of the field in overtime to set up a game-winning field goal. Brady moved the ball 53 yards in 74 seconds, and one Adam Vinatieri kick later, the Pats were unlikely champs.
Can the Rams do it?
Of those 15 most significant favorites, exactly two lived up to expectations and took home the Lombardi Trophy. That might seem like a major disappointment, but it’s not far off from what we would have expected given their preseason projections. If we use the implied win probabilities, the numbers suggest these teams would have won 2.35 Super Bowls. Winning two in reality is pretty close to what the markets suggested.
And of course, while the Rams feel like prohibitive favorites right now, the market suggests they’re still far more likely to come up short. Their implied Super Bowl probability is 12.5%. That’s roughly the success rate offenses have had while trying to convert a fourth-and-13 over the past three years. If we could simulate the 2026 NFL season eight times, the Rams would expect to win one of those eight attempts.
What could happen to sink the Rams in those other seven scenarios? Well, we’ve run through 15 of the most substantial favorites since 1990, and there have been a handful of factors that served to derail them along the way. How do they apply to this season’s Rams? Let’s pick them apart:
The schedule should be tough. The 2025 Rams were a great team too, of course, finishing second in DVOA. The problem is that the best team in the league by DVOA happened to also be in the NFC West. After Los Angeles topped Seattle 21-19 in November, the Seahawks managed to come back from a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Rams 38-37 in December. And in a playoff rubber matchup, Sam Darnold played his best game of the second half, outdueling Stafford in a 31-27 victory.
Having to play the Seahawks and 49ers a minimum of four times is simply tougher than life in the NFC East or NFC South. The Rams project to face the second-toughest schedule in the NFL this season, per ESPN’s Football Power Index. While the 49ers and Seahawks aren’t locks to play as well as they did a year ago, the Seahawks return the young core from their Super Bowl-winning team, and the 49ers, at least in theory, might be healthier this time around. (Just don’t look at their receiving corps.)
Another superteam could unexpectedly emerge in the conference. Right now, it’s fair to project the Seahawks as the stiffest competition to the Rams, and I’d expect them to be around in January. But big seasons can come out of nowhere. What if Caleb Williams goes supernova in Year 2 under Ben Johnson? What if the Packers get an MVP year from Jordan Love and their roster stays healthy deep into the season? What if Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley have resurgent years behind a healthier Eagles offensive line? Or if Kyler Murray catches fire in Kevin O’Connell’s offense and finally gives the Vikings a legitimate threat under center to go with their defense?
The QB could get hurt or take an unexpected step backward. Stafford is coming off an MVP season, but there were also concerns at this time a year ago that he was about to go on injured reserve to begin the season as he battled a back issue. He was able to come through without any issues and thrive, but even great quarterbacks have to deal with massive error bars and outcome ranges as they approach 40 years old.
Injuries can suddenly appear. I’ve brought up the case of Rich Gannon, who starred with the Raiders late in his 30s. The journeyman was healthy for four consecutive years as Oakland’s starter, and like Stafford, Gannon won his first MVP award during his age-38 season. The Raiders were among the favorites to return to the Super Bowl the following year, but Gannon struggled, got hurt seven games in, missed the rest of the season and retired after playing just three games the following year.
Other quarterbacks simply fell off an effectiveness cliff. Aaron Rodgers won MVP awards at ages 37 and 38, but he dropped from first in QBR to 26th at age 39. Peyton Manning threw for 4,727 yards and 39 touchdowns at age 38 before being benched for Brock Osweiler the following year. (The defense carried him to a second Super Bowl anyway, a fate Stafford would probably be willing to countenance.) I think Stafford should still be great in 2026, but nothing is guaranteed with quarterbacks this late in their careers.
Injuries might hit other key parts of the roster. Stafford isn’t the only irreplaceable star on the roster. The Rams were able to overcome Puka Nacua’s one-game absence in 2025 by unexpectedly leaning into 13 personnel (three tight ends) for a blowout win over the Jaguars in London, but there’s nobody on this roster and potentially in the league who can step in for the star receiver’s ability to catch passes, create after the catch and block at the highest level. Davante Adams is a very good second option, but he’s a different kind of wideout. Any Nacua injury wouldn’t sink the Rams, but it could limit their ceiling.
A wider swath of injuries could also afflict the Rams. L.A. fans surely remember what happened to the defending Super Bowl champs in 2022. Stafford, Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp failed to make it through the season, missing a combined 28 games. The offensive line was ripped to shreds by injuries, with 14 different players starting at least one game up front for McVay. The free agent additions the Rams made didn’t have a significant impact, as Bobby Wagner was one-and-done in Los Angeles, while Allen Robinson proved to be a disastrous choice as the WR2. The Rams came into the year as third-favorites to win the Super Bowl and finished 5-12.
A weak link costs them in key games. We saw this in 2025, when subpar special teams cost the Rams a number of victories during the regular season and might have finished them off in the playoffs. A blocked punt set the Panthers up to take the lead with 2:39 to go in the wild-card round before a Rams comeback, while a muffed punt by Xavier Smith handed the Seahawks a short field and a touchdown in a conference title game the Rams would eventually lose by four points.
McVay had to make major changes to the special teams during the year, firing special teams coordinator Chase Blackburn and replacing kicker Joshua Karty with Harrison Mevis. The latter was solid in his first season as an NFL kicker, but he has attempted only two field goals from beyond 50 yards as a pro. The Rams were 26th in special teams DVOA, and while they hired Bubba Ventrone as the coordinator and signed Lions special-teamer Grant Stuard to help fix things, I’m not sure they project to be much better in 2026. It’s entirely possible that a rough moment on special teams decides the season for the Rams again.
They make it to the Super Bowl ... and lose. Of course, the most likely scenario is that the Rams either overcome or don’t need to deal with these issues. But even if they do get to the Super Bowl, the variance of a one-game sample and the difficulty of playing what should be a very good team on the other side of the field can swamp any sort of advantage. A loss in the Super Bowl wouldn’t feel like a disaster in the way that missing the playoffs altogether might, but it would count just the same from the perspective of winning a title. And it happened to four of the 15 other superteams that we looked at from the past 35 years.
