A fans view from the Wildcard - Embrace the Journey
| January 19, 2022 11:59AM |
I recall seeing a piece from NFL films years ago when the KC Chiefs were playing the 49ers in San Francisco I believe in the year 2000. The game wasn’t remarkable for anything other than a pass play that otherwise would get no notice. A pass was thrown to HOF TE Tony Gonzalez. The pass, pattern and subsequent late hit were such that it drove Gonzalez far out of bounds.
The play didn’t mean a whole lot to that particular game and was only notable because Gonzalez collided with a cameraman whose “misfortune” had him standing in the one place that the play would carry all of Gonzalez’s 249-pound frame. The collision caused the cameraman, named Mickey Pfleger, to suffer a concussion severe enough to cause him to be transported to San Francisco General Hospital. A CT Scan revealed not only the concussion but the early stages of what would have otherwise been the cause of his death. A painless tumor slowly growing in his brain.
In the normal course - that tumor is such that when it reaches the size to become discoverable, it is too late to save the patient. So what otherwise would have been considered a 1 in a 100000 chance of bad luck by getting hit on the sideline now becomes a 1 in a 100 Trillion chance that your tumor, which would otherwise have killed you, gets discovered in time to save your life because you were run into hard enough by Tony Gonzalez during an NFL game – a game that you were not playing in -- that you are transported to the hospital to get your head examined.
If one engages in the what ifs about that situation, it becomes mindboggling.
What if the Chiefs called a run, what if the Camera guy moved a half step to get a better picture, what if Tony Gonzalez gets bumped at the line, what if a better pass was thrown, what if the QB checks down, what if the DB doesn’t commit a late hit, what if . . . .
What if Rodney Harrison doesn’t go low on Trent Green?
You see, until the story is fully told, we really don’t know where the journey is taking us.
Why am I talking about this?
What if the Rams, who have never won a truly outdoor cold weather game (they beat Dallas in 1983 in Texas Stadium which is their only “cold weather” win in a fake outdoor stadium) weren’t going to beat the Packers in Lambeau? Or what if they needed the Packers to go through an extremely physical contest the week before the Rams meet them in the NFCCG to make them not only vulnerable, but actually causes them to get beaten down by the Rams? How would this come to fruition?
What if the Rams, who had a 99.6% chance to beat the 49ers last Sunday with under two minutes to play, actually fail to do so – causing the 49ers to NOT be eliminated. And what if this loss allows the 49ers -- who shouldn’t be even be in the playoffs -- to qualify and go to Dallas. And what if by going to Dallas, a 49ers win sends them to Green Bay? And what if the 49ers, a team that ran for 300 yards against the packers a few years back in the playoffs, were the only team in this tournament that could beat the Packers in Green Bay or do enough damage to an otherwise well rested team to make them beatable the following week?
And what if the Rams could never win 10 in a row but could win 4 in a row if they could just break their 5 game winning streak prior to getting into the playoffs?
And what if the end of the 49ers winning streak versus the Rams came not at the Season finale but at the NFC Championship game from . . . SOFI FIELD?
If any of that were true, it could make the Rams loss to the 49ers maybe one of the single luckiest events in Rams history. Can something like this happen to the Rams? An event so freakish that it ends up being the critical missing piece to the Super Bowl run?
It would be like finding an undrafted free agent former grocery store clerk who looked so unremarkable in the final game of the 1998 season that the Rams left him unprotected in an expansion draft only to remain undrafted and to then lead them to the Super Bowl the very next year and becoming the league and Super Bowl MVP.
I mean that’s impossible isn’t it?
What are the odds?
Again, until the story is fully told, we simply don’t know if our journey is taking us where we want to be.
That is why, for as long as I can remember, I have always fervently believed that one must embrace the journey in addition to the destination.
It is why, for me, the 1989 season still remains one of my all-time favorite seasons even though that team didn’t end up winning it all. That team was fun, that team had heart, that team had talent and that team had soul. Teams like that can take us on amazing journeys and if your only focus is the destination, you miss the ride.
For me, since January 12, 2016, the ride has been nothing short of spectacular.
Its sad really, that some don’t see it.
How many organizations can say they haven’t had a losing season since that time? During the last half-decade How many organizations can say that they are in the conversation each year to win it all? Throughout this year we have lost RB1, RB2, RB3, RB4, TE2, DT2, LT1, LT2, OLB2, ILB1, CB2, WR1 (or 2 depending on how you rate Woods at time he was injured), S1, S2 and PR1, KR1 -- we play in the toughest division BY FAR in the NFL and yet, here we are, NFC West Champs.
Let me say that again: HERE WE ARE - WE ARE NFC WEST CHAMPIONS.
How many organizations do you think can do this under those circumstances in THAT division? How many do you think can do this after losing players like Troy Hill, JJIII, Morgan Fox, Gerald Everett, Michael Brockers, carry a boat load of dead money, change OL coaches, and lose their DC who engineered the #1 statistically ranked defense the year before?
I’ll tell you how many: NOT @#$%& MANY!
But to some, we are DOOMED! To some we have NO CHANCE. To some we are too soft, too weak to be relevant.
You want to enjoy life more? Change your perspective:
When I hear things like “they could have lost that game”, to me that means “we won that game!”
When I hear that my team “backed into the playoffs”, what I hear is my team is “IN THE PLAYOFFS”.
When I hear the Rams are hosting the first ever Playoff game at SOFI, I hear “We are going to Sofi!”.
It is with this heart that I went to Sofi realizing that the best way to clear that bitter taste from the previous week out of my mouth was to demolish the Cardinals.
A “W” in the first ever playoff game at SOFI and being a mere 2 games from the Super Bowl sounded pretty good to me.
The funky last-minute scheduling, the Monday Night slot, coupled with a team that does not “travel” well in the Cardinals all contributed to SOFI being nothing less than spectacular Monday night. A sea of blue with very few spots of red. No silent counts for the Rams this week folks.
I still have my foam noodles from those 1999 and 2001 playoff years. I remember being in STL and watching those noodles being shaken in the air and how beautiful a sight that was as the crowd blew the roof off of the Transworld Dome.
Here I was 20 years later, with my entire family, spinning beautiful yellow towels emboldened with the word CHAMPS in all CAPS just under the words NFC West Division. A division that had not one, but 3 teams represented in a 14-team tournament from 8 divisions. Winning that division ain’t no joke – you can’t be weak and you can’t be soft to stand atop that division after 17 games.
No way. No how.
Just ask the Cowboys, who on Saturday fulfilled the second leg of the Mickey Pflegler miracle by dropping to the 49ers – the third-place team from our division!
Now our turn.
During warmups, I noticed both Cooper Kupp and OBJ throwing the ball – A LOT. At first, I told my son that they are going to run some kind of gimmick with either Kupp or OBJ throwing the ball. But after about 10 minutes of them CONTINUING TO THROW THE BALL, I thought they have to be messing with the Cardinals – I mean they were straight telegraphing that they were going to throw it during the game. Nope, I conclude, this is a ploy, it will be their former HS All-American QB Cam Akers that is going to throw the ball (I didn’t see him throw one during warmups by the way).
OBJ even attempted about a 30 yard field goal during warms ups. Ugly as all get out, but it split the uprights. By the way, what kind of organization gets OBJ and Von Miller midseason?
All pomp and circumstances of playoff football aside, they dimmed the lights in the stadium and here comes Michael Buffer to kick off the game with his “LEEEEEEEEETSSSSS GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEE!!!” firing up the crowd. Towels spinning, crowd rocking. This ain’t 1999 or 2001, but if I can paraphrase the late, great Jim Hanifan, the Rams crowd Monday night was “Pretty @#$%& good!” and damn well good enough to cause a ton of problems.
And then a really interesting thing happened.
That Ram team that showed up for the first 28 minutes of the 49ers game – the one that absolutely manhandled the 49ers for 28 minutes, re-appeared, EXCEPT MORE PISSED THEN EVER and without any real let down for a full 60 minutes.
From the first defensive play, when A-Shawn slams their RB to the ground, to the first offensive play where Sony Michel busted a 35-yard run, to Johnny Hekker’s first punt downed inside the 10, each unit set its own tone – the tone that says, its serious now – don’t @#$%& with us.
You know what happens if a team that boasts Von Miller, AD, Jalen Ramsey, Leonard Floyd, Greg Gaines, Darious Williams et al, all play to the best of their ability for the whole game? -10 yards after Q1 happens, a deer in the headlights QB happens, a short field happens, a pick six happens, a demoralized opponent happens, a dominant running game happens, a Raheem Morris smile which I could see from across the field happens and, for us in the stands, a stress-free game happens.
So many good things happened in this game it is hard to catalogue them all. Matthew Stafford playing SMART FOOTBALL, deadly from his empty sets (2 easy first downs dropped by Higbee and Kupp out of empty), smart with the ball, ran when he should, all but 1 or 2 balls were catchable. His pass to OBJ for the score was a beauty. Just really sound football. The type of football that if a streaky QB can play for 3 more games then all things are possible.
How about AShawn? That dude runs out of gas faster than a Toyota Chaser but man for a play or two each series, he was absolutely destroying the OL in front of him. Atta boy big fella, it’s the playoffs and we can use you in the rotation.
And then there was Cam.
Holy @#$%&!
The guy looked like he was being pulled from the opponents endzone by some invisible tractor beam. His entire body movement and lean was downhill and towards the endzone. I mean it literally looked like he was being sucked towards the opponent’s goal every time he touched the ball. His legs looked fresh, he looked quick and determined. As an old poster here on the herd mentioned on Twitter, Sony and Cam were Thunder and LIGHTENING!
Cam’s emergence and how it bodes well for our playoff hopes cannot be overstated. This guy is a superstar in waiting. Speaking of odds, what are the odds that a player with a torn Achilles five months earlier will not only be playing but absolutely explode into the open field and absolutely level one of the best safeties in the league ? That type of play, on a 5.5 month timeline from Achilles surgery has never happened before . . . ever.
It was too bad that Budda couldn’t get up because it affected the ability for the entire team to really enjoy the play in the moment. Regardless, that was the tone that was set and felt all night long.
How about Johnny Hekker? The forgotten superstar. His punts were on point. He was putting crazy spin on the ball so when the coverage wasn’t there, no balls were rolling into the endzone, but rather spinning out of bounds.
How about our entire special teams? Have they come together at just the right time? And while it feels weird screaming “LETS GO BRANDON!” before every punt return, let’s @#$%& go Brandon! The guy has solved our KR1 and PR1 problems for the foreseeable future and certainly for the playoffs. Plus, random BP Factoid, he and Stafford pounded the Pack in 2018 winning 31-0 and Powell had over 100 yards receiving at Lambeau.
They say to win playoff football you need to be playing your best ball at the end of the year. Can it be doubted right now that that was one of the most complete performances out of this team that we saw all year? But for the let down in 2H v. SF, a game they still had a 99.6 percent chance of winning, they haven’t been “beaten” since November.
This team is primed and dangerous and, in 1 week, when the third leg of the Pflegler miracle comes to fruition and SF is headed back to SOFI with their winning streak, pride and Super Bowl on the line. None of the previous losses will matter or even be remembered. What may have looked like a disaster a few weeks back, will look much differently then.
So let us enjoy this journey – at every step -- and while Tampa is showing decent weather for next Sunday, let us hope for a little thunder, a lot of Lightening and at the very end of the day -- a sacrificial goat.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2022 12:04PM by stlramz.
The play didn’t mean a whole lot to that particular game and was only notable because Gonzalez collided with a cameraman whose “misfortune” had him standing in the one place that the play would carry all of Gonzalez’s 249-pound frame. The collision caused the cameraman, named Mickey Pfleger, to suffer a concussion severe enough to cause him to be transported to San Francisco General Hospital. A CT Scan revealed not only the concussion but the early stages of what would have otherwise been the cause of his death. A painless tumor slowly growing in his brain.
In the normal course - that tumor is such that when it reaches the size to become discoverable, it is too late to save the patient. So what otherwise would have been considered a 1 in a 100000 chance of bad luck by getting hit on the sideline now becomes a 1 in a 100 Trillion chance that your tumor, which would otherwise have killed you, gets discovered in time to save your life because you were run into hard enough by Tony Gonzalez during an NFL game – a game that you were not playing in -- that you are transported to the hospital to get your head examined.
If one engages in the what ifs about that situation, it becomes mindboggling.
What if the Chiefs called a run, what if the Camera guy moved a half step to get a better picture, what if Tony Gonzalez gets bumped at the line, what if a better pass was thrown, what if the QB checks down, what if the DB doesn’t commit a late hit, what if . . . .
What if Rodney Harrison doesn’t go low on Trent Green?
You see, until the story is fully told, we really don’t know where the journey is taking us.
Why am I talking about this?
What if the Rams, who have never won a truly outdoor cold weather game (they beat Dallas in 1983 in Texas Stadium which is their only “cold weather” win in a fake outdoor stadium) weren’t going to beat the Packers in Lambeau? Or what if they needed the Packers to go through an extremely physical contest the week before the Rams meet them in the NFCCG to make them not only vulnerable, but actually causes them to get beaten down by the Rams? How would this come to fruition?
What if the Rams, who had a 99.6% chance to beat the 49ers last Sunday with under two minutes to play, actually fail to do so – causing the 49ers to NOT be eliminated. And what if this loss allows the 49ers -- who shouldn’t be even be in the playoffs -- to qualify and go to Dallas. And what if by going to Dallas, a 49ers win sends them to Green Bay? And what if the 49ers, a team that ran for 300 yards against the packers a few years back in the playoffs, were the only team in this tournament that could beat the Packers in Green Bay or do enough damage to an otherwise well rested team to make them beatable the following week?
And what if the Rams could never win 10 in a row but could win 4 in a row if they could just break their 5 game winning streak prior to getting into the playoffs?
And what if the end of the 49ers winning streak versus the Rams came not at the Season finale but at the NFC Championship game from . . . SOFI FIELD?
If any of that were true, it could make the Rams loss to the 49ers maybe one of the single luckiest events in Rams history. Can something like this happen to the Rams? An event so freakish that it ends up being the critical missing piece to the Super Bowl run?
It would be like finding an undrafted free agent former grocery store clerk who looked so unremarkable in the final game of the 1998 season that the Rams left him unprotected in an expansion draft only to remain undrafted and to then lead them to the Super Bowl the very next year and becoming the league and Super Bowl MVP.
I mean that’s impossible isn’t it?
What are the odds?
Again, until the story is fully told, we simply don’t know if our journey is taking us where we want to be.
That is why, for as long as I can remember, I have always fervently believed that one must embrace the journey in addition to the destination.
It is why, for me, the 1989 season still remains one of my all-time favorite seasons even though that team didn’t end up winning it all. That team was fun, that team had heart, that team had talent and that team had soul. Teams like that can take us on amazing journeys and if your only focus is the destination, you miss the ride.
For me, since January 12, 2016, the ride has been nothing short of spectacular.
Its sad really, that some don’t see it.
How many organizations can say they haven’t had a losing season since that time? During the last half-decade How many organizations can say that they are in the conversation each year to win it all? Throughout this year we have lost RB1, RB2, RB3, RB4, TE2, DT2, LT1, LT2, OLB2, ILB1, CB2, WR1 (or 2 depending on how you rate Woods at time he was injured), S1, S2 and PR1, KR1 -- we play in the toughest division BY FAR in the NFL and yet, here we are, NFC West Champs.
Let me say that again: HERE WE ARE - WE ARE NFC WEST CHAMPIONS.
How many organizations do you think can do this under those circumstances in THAT division? How many do you think can do this after losing players like Troy Hill, JJIII, Morgan Fox, Gerald Everett, Michael Brockers, carry a boat load of dead money, change OL coaches, and lose their DC who engineered the #1 statistically ranked defense the year before?
I’ll tell you how many: NOT @#$%& MANY!
But to some, we are DOOMED! To some we have NO CHANCE. To some we are too soft, too weak to be relevant.
You want to enjoy life more? Change your perspective:
When I hear things like “they could have lost that game”, to me that means “we won that game!”
When I hear that my team “backed into the playoffs”, what I hear is my team is “IN THE PLAYOFFS”.
When I hear the Rams are hosting the first ever Playoff game at SOFI, I hear “We are going to Sofi!”.
It is with this heart that I went to Sofi realizing that the best way to clear that bitter taste from the previous week out of my mouth was to demolish the Cardinals.
A “W” in the first ever playoff game at SOFI and being a mere 2 games from the Super Bowl sounded pretty good to me.
The funky last-minute scheduling, the Monday Night slot, coupled with a team that does not “travel” well in the Cardinals all contributed to SOFI being nothing less than spectacular Monday night. A sea of blue with very few spots of red. No silent counts for the Rams this week folks.
I still have my foam noodles from those 1999 and 2001 playoff years. I remember being in STL and watching those noodles being shaken in the air and how beautiful a sight that was as the crowd blew the roof off of the Transworld Dome.
Here I was 20 years later, with my entire family, spinning beautiful yellow towels emboldened with the word CHAMPS in all CAPS just under the words NFC West Division. A division that had not one, but 3 teams represented in a 14-team tournament from 8 divisions. Winning that division ain’t no joke – you can’t be weak and you can’t be soft to stand atop that division after 17 games.
No way. No how.
Just ask the Cowboys, who on Saturday fulfilled the second leg of the Mickey Pflegler miracle by dropping to the 49ers – the third-place team from our division!
Now our turn.
During warmups, I noticed both Cooper Kupp and OBJ throwing the ball – A LOT. At first, I told my son that they are going to run some kind of gimmick with either Kupp or OBJ throwing the ball. But after about 10 minutes of them CONTINUING TO THROW THE BALL, I thought they have to be messing with the Cardinals – I mean they were straight telegraphing that they were going to throw it during the game. Nope, I conclude, this is a ploy, it will be their former HS All-American QB Cam Akers that is going to throw the ball (I didn’t see him throw one during warmups by the way).
OBJ even attempted about a 30 yard field goal during warms ups. Ugly as all get out, but it split the uprights. By the way, what kind of organization gets OBJ and Von Miller midseason?
All pomp and circumstances of playoff football aside, they dimmed the lights in the stadium and here comes Michael Buffer to kick off the game with his “LEEEEEEEEETSSSSS GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEE!!!” firing up the crowd. Towels spinning, crowd rocking. This ain’t 1999 or 2001, but if I can paraphrase the late, great Jim Hanifan, the Rams crowd Monday night was “Pretty @#$%& good!” and damn well good enough to cause a ton of problems.
And then a really interesting thing happened.
That Ram team that showed up for the first 28 minutes of the 49ers game – the one that absolutely manhandled the 49ers for 28 minutes, re-appeared, EXCEPT MORE PISSED THEN EVER and without any real let down for a full 60 minutes.
From the first defensive play, when A-Shawn slams their RB to the ground, to the first offensive play where Sony Michel busted a 35-yard run, to Johnny Hekker’s first punt downed inside the 10, each unit set its own tone – the tone that says, its serious now – don’t @#$%& with us.
You know what happens if a team that boasts Von Miller, AD, Jalen Ramsey, Leonard Floyd, Greg Gaines, Darious Williams et al, all play to the best of their ability for the whole game? -10 yards after Q1 happens, a deer in the headlights QB happens, a short field happens, a pick six happens, a demoralized opponent happens, a dominant running game happens, a Raheem Morris smile which I could see from across the field happens and, for us in the stands, a stress-free game happens.
So many good things happened in this game it is hard to catalogue them all. Matthew Stafford playing SMART FOOTBALL, deadly from his empty sets (2 easy first downs dropped by Higbee and Kupp out of empty), smart with the ball, ran when he should, all but 1 or 2 balls were catchable. His pass to OBJ for the score was a beauty. Just really sound football. The type of football that if a streaky QB can play for 3 more games then all things are possible.
How about AShawn? That dude runs out of gas faster than a Toyota Chaser but man for a play or two each series, he was absolutely destroying the OL in front of him. Atta boy big fella, it’s the playoffs and we can use you in the rotation.
And then there was Cam.
Holy @#$%&!
The guy looked like he was being pulled from the opponents endzone by some invisible tractor beam. His entire body movement and lean was downhill and towards the endzone. I mean it literally looked like he was being sucked towards the opponent’s goal every time he touched the ball. His legs looked fresh, he looked quick and determined. As an old poster here on the herd mentioned on Twitter, Sony and Cam were Thunder and LIGHTENING!
Cam’s emergence and how it bodes well for our playoff hopes cannot be overstated. This guy is a superstar in waiting. Speaking of odds, what are the odds that a player with a torn Achilles five months earlier will not only be playing but absolutely explode into the open field and absolutely level one of the best safeties in the league ? That type of play, on a 5.5 month timeline from Achilles surgery has never happened before . . . ever.
It was too bad that Budda couldn’t get up because it affected the ability for the entire team to really enjoy the play in the moment. Regardless, that was the tone that was set and felt all night long.
How about Johnny Hekker? The forgotten superstar. His punts were on point. He was putting crazy spin on the ball so when the coverage wasn’t there, no balls were rolling into the endzone, but rather spinning out of bounds.
How about our entire special teams? Have they come together at just the right time? And while it feels weird screaming “LETS GO BRANDON!” before every punt return, let’s @#$%& go Brandon! The guy has solved our KR1 and PR1 problems for the foreseeable future and certainly for the playoffs. Plus, random BP Factoid, he and Stafford pounded the Pack in 2018 winning 31-0 and Powell had over 100 yards receiving at Lambeau.
They say to win playoff football you need to be playing your best ball at the end of the year. Can it be doubted right now that that was one of the most complete performances out of this team that we saw all year? But for the let down in 2H v. SF, a game they still had a 99.6 percent chance of winning, they haven’t been “beaten” since November.
This team is primed and dangerous and, in 1 week, when the third leg of the Pflegler miracle comes to fruition and SF is headed back to SOFI with their winning streak, pride and Super Bowl on the line. None of the previous losses will matter or even be remembered. What may have looked like a disaster a few weeks back, will look much differently then.
So let us enjoy this journey – at every step -- and while Tampa is showing decent weather for next Sunday, let us hope for a little thunder, a lot of Lightening and at the very end of the day -- a sacrificial goat.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2022 12:04PM by stlramz.
