January 26, 2026
The NFC Championship Game is in the books, and the Seattle Seahawks are the final team standing in the conference. We have one last obituary to write, for the Los Angeles Rams.
The 2025 Rams employed the likely NFL MVP in Matthew Stafford, one of the best wide receiver duos in the NFL in Puka Nacua and Davante Adams, a good offensive line, a good rushing attack, and a young defense with an excellent pass rush. They seemed as well-equipped to win a Super Bowl as any team in the league.
But, there are three phases in the game football, and the Rams' special teams were horrid this season.
I'm sure you all remember when the Rams lost a game to the Eagles earlier this season on a blocked field goal that was returned for a TD by Jordan Davis.
Two weeks later, the Rams were poised to take a 1-point lead in the fourth quarter against the 49ers after a TD, but the PAT was blocked. I mean, this is atrocious blocking:
That game went to overtime, and the Rams lost.
In Week 17 against the Seahawks, Rashid Shaheed housed a punt for a TD. That was the biggest play of that game, and may have cost the Rams the 1 seed.
In the Wild Card Round, the Rams had punt blocked late in the game, leading to a go-ahead Panthers TD:
At least the Rams survived that disaster, as the offense drove for a game-winning score.
In the NFC Championship Game, a muffed punt was the biggest play in the game.
The Seahawks would score on the next play and go up by 11.
Anyway, the moral of the story here is... special teams matter! A lot!
But also, what we saw in this game was a big mistake by Sean McVay, who has a history of poor game management decisions in playoff games. On the Seahawks' final drive, during which they were trying to bleed out the rest of the clock, Cooper Kupp caught a pass and was tackled at the sticks. The play was ruled a first down, but man, it was razor thin.
Personally, I think he's short, but it's so close that whichever way it was ruled initially was probably going to stand. Still, it was worth challenging, and McVay did want to challenge it, but he called timeout after the play instead of throwing the challenge flag.
It's unclear whether the officials would not let McVay challenge or if he did not want to blow an extra timeout in case the challenge failed.
Either way, he screwed up. In fairness, it would have been an incredibly heady action to have thrown the challenge immediately after the play, knowing that at a minimum you'd get the timeout. And with three minutes to go with both challenges in his pocket, it's not like he needed to preserve the challenge flag. Throw it! But he didn't, and we'll never know if it would have been overturned or not.
Looking ahead, I imagine Stafford will return to play another season, but he'll turn 38 in a couple weeks. The Rams got about as good a season as they could have ever hoped they'd get from him, and still didn't get the job done.
In our first Hierarchy of 2025, our post-free agency edition, here's what I wrote about the Seahawks, who I had ninth in the NFC:
The Seahawks made the playoffs 14 times from 2003 to 2020. They were consistently contenders during those years. More recently, with Geno Smith at quarterback, they've become mostly harmless — a team that has a chance to maybe make the playoffs with a lucky bounce here or there, but no threat at all to do big things. That's a bad place to be in any sport.
They replaced Geno with a younger version of Geno in Sam Darnold, thus securing their spot in NFL purgatory a while longer.
OOOOOPS, lol. Darnold was fantastic in the NFC Championship Game, completing 25 of 36 passes for 346 yards, 3 TDs, and 0 INTs. If he can play anywhere remotely close to that level in a couple weeks, he will be holding a Lombardi Trophy over his head.
He's making a lot of folks look bad, like the Vikings, Geno Smith, all the teams he has beaten this season, and dorks with keyboards like me, who almost universally wrote him off before the season even began.
Side note: Since we all just watched the NFC Championship Game yesterday, here's an updated visual of the last time each team in the NFC played in the NFCCG:
And thus concludes our Hierarchy/Obituary for the 2025-2026 season. ☠️
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