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Sarah Barshop, ESPN Staff WriterSep 22, 2024, 10:43 PM ET
- Sarah Barshop covers the Los Angeles Rams for ESPN. She joined ESPN in 2016 to cover the Green Bay Packers for ESPN Milwaukee. She then moved to Houston to cover the Texans. She came to ESPN after working as a writer and editor for Sports Illustrated. You can follow her on Twitter @sarahbarshop.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — When quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams offense took the field with just less than 12 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, the team was down 10 points to the division rival San Francisco 49ers and staring a 0-3 start in the face.
But this is a position Stafford, in his 16th NFL season, had been in before. Entering the fourth quarter, he had 44 career game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or OT, the most among active quarterbacks.
And on Sunday afternoon, Stafford added to that, leading the Rams down the field for a drive that ended with a Kyren Williams touchdown to tie it and then a second drive that ended with a Joshua Karty field goal with five seconds remaining, as L.A. won 27-24.
Stafford’s 45th game-winning drive in the fourth quarter or overtime is the seventh most since the 1970 merger, according to ESPN Research.
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Stafford got the ball back in a tie game with 42 seconds to go after a Rams defensive stop at the San Francisco 45 forced the 49ers to punt. And while the sideline was celebrating that stop, when defensive captain Kobie Turner looked around, he noted the calmness that exuded from the quarterback.
“Everybody’s hurrahing and everybody’s super excited and Matt is just still,” Turner said. “He’s just calm and he’s going on the field, it looks like it’s a normal day.
“And so when you kind of see that presence, never being too high, never being too low, and you see the fire that he plays with, you know and you have complete confidence in the fact that he’s going to put us in the best situations.”
The Rams’ victory in their home opener improved their record to 1-2, avoiding a 0-3 start for the first time since 2011, when the team finished 2-14.
“There’s no doubt that down in the fourth quarter with the ball in my hand, I got a little extra heartbeat going,” Stafford said. “But I’m excited about those opportunities. That’s what I want. I want to be in those moments.
“I feel like the guys on our team know that and hopefully they feed off of that and know that hey, if we’re on defense and we can get the ball back for the offense, [we’ve] got a guy that’s done it before. And I know the guys in the huddle, we believe in each other. Whatever the circumstances are, we got a darn good shot.”
The 14-point comeback victory was the largest under coach Sean McVay and was the franchise’s largest comeback since 2012, according to ESPN Research.
“What a job by our group, just continuing to battle, continuing to fight,” McVay said. “And there’s a lot of guts. There’s a lot of resilience in this group. And it’s just one game, but I’m really proud of them. … A lot of guts, a lot of grit. I’m really proud of this group.”
McVay’s postgame news conference was a far cry from a week ago, when the Rams lost 41-10 to the Arizona Cardinals in a game that had him saying the only positive thing to take from the game is that it “is over now and we can move forward.” In that loss, the Rams lost a top receiver for the second time in two weeks, as Cooper Kupp sprained his left ankle and will miss an extended period of time.
But in that news conference, McVay challenged himself and his team to figure out how to respond from the loss, despite starting the season with an 0-2 record.
“I saw a team respond after a really humbling week last week,” McVay said after the win over the 49ers. “And three hours will never define you good or bad unless you allow it to. And we’ve got to do a good job of being able to build on this.”
