Rams overwhelming favorites to hoist Lombardi Trophy

BY J.A. SCHWARTZ

The Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl in February, trouncing a very good New England team 29-13 to claim the second championship in franchise history.  They return most of their skill players, including quarterback Sam Darnold and 2025 Offensive Player of the Year Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who signed a four-year contract worth $168.8 million, making him the highest-paid receiver in the history of the league. Head Coach Mike McDonald, 38, is 24-10 in his two years as Seattle’s head coach, and will once again unleash his defensive wizardry upon the league (the Seahawks allowed the fewest points in the NFL in 2025) as his team seeks to repeat as NFL Champions in 2026.

 
So why aren’t the Seahawks favored to win their own division, much less return to the Super Bowl in 2026?
 
The answer is simple: The Los Angeles Rams spent the offseason making arguably the second-best team in the league last season significantly better, and have earned the right to be the odds-on favorite to win Super Bowl LXI at their home stadium, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California on Valentine’s Day 2027. The latest gambling odds place the Rams at +500 (5-1 odds) implying a 16.7% chance to win the title.
 
The 2025 Rams offense posted 518 points and racked up 6,709 yards, both of which led the league. QB Matthew Stafford had easily the best season of his career, throwing for 4,707 yards, 46 touchdowns (with only eight interceptions), and a passer rating of 109.2.  Those metrics earned Stafford the MVP Award, the first time he has won that honor in an illustrious 17-year career. Stafford returns in 2026, as do skill position veterans Puka Nacua, Davante Adams, and Kyren Williams, who combined to score 38 touchdowns in 2025. Orchestrating this cadre of weapons is Head Coach Sean McVay, 92-57 in his nine years at the helm in Los Angeles, having won the Super Bowl in 2021. There is little reason to believe that the offense will suffer any loss of effectiveness entering the 2026 season.
 
The 2025 Rams lost the NFC Championship 31-27 to the Seattle Seahawks, despite outgaining them 479-396 in the contest.  Los Angeles finished 2025 at 12-5, winning a Wild Card entry into the postseason—Seattle was 14-3 and claimed the division title—but they could not get past their division rivals with a Super Bowl berth on the line. Sam Darnold riddled the Los Angeles secondary in that contest, completing 25 of 36 passes for 346 yards and three touchdowns without an interception.
 
General Manager Les Snead was determined to upgrade his defense following the loss and was relentless in his pursuit to acquire the most impactful defensive players in the game to address their shortcomings on that side of the ball. He traded the team’s 2026 first-round selection (29th overall) along with their fifth and sixth-round picks in that draft as well as a 2027 third-rounder to the Chiefs for Trent McDuffie, arguably one of the top three cornerbacks in the league. After signing McDuffie to a four-year, $124 million contract extension, Snead lured Jaylen Watson away from the Chiefs, signing him to a three-year, $51 million free agent contract to play next to his former teammate in Kansas City, giving the Rams two of the top 15 corners in the game according to most defensive metrics.
 
McDuffie and Watson were at the heart of a Kansas City secondary that won two Super Bowls and claimed three consecutive AFC Championships, and that postseason success certainly must have been attractive to the Rams. While McDuffie earned the larger contract, Watson has performed at an elite level as well. Over the past two seasons, Watson has allowed only a single touchdown while in coverage, and since 2022, he’s forced the fifth highest rate of “tight-window throws” in the entire NFL, at 30.4%, behind leaders Sauce Gardner (34.8%)  and Patrick Surtain II (31.1%). That metric measures how closely a cornerback was in coverage when a quarterback made the decision to throw to the receiver being covered by the corner, and a “tight window” is a play where the cornerback is a yard or less away from the intended target. McDuffie and Watson figure to reprise their joint efforts to frustrate opposing quarterbacks while playing for McVay and the Rams in the coming seasons and hope to do so deep into the playoffs, as they have proven capable of in Kansas City.

 
Snead was not nearly done.
 
The franchise had long coveted Myles Garrett, the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year (his second such award), who set an NFL record with 23 sacks in 2025 in Cleveland. Considered by most analysts to be the single best player in the entire league (Pro Football Focus ranked him #1 after the 2025 season), Garrett had long been an untouchable asset, the franchise cornerstone of the Browns, signed to a long-term contract to play in Cleveland.

Snead was quoted as saying: “We tried to do this with draft compensation, then the draft came and went. At the end of the day, and where it got a little tough for us, is they asked for Jared Verse in return…at first, we were a no, based on all that Jared’s done for the organization. Some time in late May, we had a decision to make.”

After making multiple attempts to trade for Garrett, Snead finally put a package together that enticed Andrew Berry, the Cleveland GM, to relinquish his superstar, and Garrett became a Ram in return for young edge rusher Verse, a 2027 first-round pick, and 2028 second and third-round selections. Garrett quickly agreed to a five-year, $208.2 million contract restructuring, that includes a full no-trade clause and is remarkably cap-friendly for Los Angeles. McVay noted, “We feel really fortunate. Things like this don’t present themselves and we wanted to be aggressive.”

Snead and McVay still weren’t finished.

Fresh on the heels of acquiring Garrett, McVay communicated with Aaron Donald, the Rams franchise leader in sacks with 111, about possibly returning to the club. Donald had retired in March of 2024, but was apparently intrigued by the idea of playing with Garrett. McVay was coy: “Talked to him about the opportunity to bring him on board. If Aaron decides he wants to dust them off at the age of 35, I bet you he could still do it at a pretty high clip.”

While it remains to be seen if Donald can indeed regain the form to dominate on the interior of a defensive line, there is no questioning his Hall of Fame credentials. Most analysts consider Donald among the top five defensive players in the history of the NFL, and he is usually regarded as the greatest defensive tackle of all time. He’s been named Defensive Player of the Year three times (tied for the most in NFL history), and was an eight-time First Team All-Pro (tied for the most ever by a defensive player).

Donald officially decided to un-retire on August 30th, and agreed to a one year deal worth $20 million (with incentives, he can earn up to $30 million) to return to the Rams and terrorize opposing quarterbacks with Garrett.

Adding Garrett and Donald to a pass rush that already features returning stars Byron Young (12.0 sacks in 2025), Kobie Turner (7), Braden Fiske (3), and Josaiah Stewart (3) seems almost unfair. Defensive Coordinator Chris Shula has been gifted with an embarrassment of riches, and will employ his stable of pocket crashers to their maximum impact. If Donald is truly capable of approximating even 70% of his pre-retirement form, Shula’s defense might be the best in the game. What if he’s better than that ?

When asked if he was up for the challenge after two plus years away from competitive football, Donald didn’t hedge. “Do I feel like I can still be myself? 100%. If I didn’t feel like that, I wouldn’t be here.”

Most preseason publications rate the Rams offense as the best in the league, as they were in 2025. Given the off-season additions the franchise made on the other side of the ball, their defense is also considered the strongest unit in the game. It would appear that Snead and McVay have built a team that has all the tools to win the Super Bowl this season.

Why might that not happen?

Reasons the Rams won’t win the Super Bowl:

1) Historical gambling data: Over the past 30 years, 21 teams have entered the season with +500 or better odds as the pre-season favorite to win the Super Bowl. Of that group of “superteams”, only the 2018 Patriots (+350) actually won the Lombardi Trophy.

2) They play in the toughest division in the sport: Achieving lofty win totals, and thus first round playoff byes, will be that much harder in their division. Because of that fact, their path to the Super Bowl will likely be longer, and thus more susceptible to randomness and injury. In 2025, the NFC West won 41 combined games, easily the top mark in the game. The NFC North won a combined total of 38, a distant second to the NFC West. The Seahawks, Rams and 49ers each won double digit games in 2025, and are all projected to do so again in 2026. Only the rebuilding Cardinals are considered a weak divisional opponent in the coming season. Squaring off against high caliber, physical opponents at least four times a season takes a toll on a roster, and may well be a significant hindrance to a possibly historic Rams season.

3) Injuries: The great equalizer in the modern game is the brutal physical nature of it. Players are bigger, faster and stronger than at any point in the history of the NFL, and the dozens of collisions inherent in any contest carry that much more risk as a result. Attrition usually has a greater impact on the fortunes of NFL teams than almost any other variable, and the Rams are as vulnerable as any other franchise, especially at the game’s most critical position: quarterback.

Matthew Stafford is coming off an MVP season, and it would be foolish to suggest that he’s diminished in any way as a passer. However, he’ll be 39 when Super Bowl LXI is played, and has a history of spinal injuries, some of which have cost him games as a Ram (he’s missed 11 games in the past five seasons, and Los Angeles went 3-8 during those games). Historical data suggests that 20-25% of starting quarterbacks will miss at least six games in a regular season. If that misfortune were to befall Stafford and the Rams, McVay’s offense would have to be piloted by Stetson Bennett, a fourth round pick in the 2023 draft who has never taken a regular season NFL snap. Bennett may well be capable of running the offense quite handily, but it would be ludicrous to suggest that his performance could approximate Stafford’s.

Of all the potential road blocks that stand between this star-studded Rams roster and a Super Bowl victory in February, an injury to Stafford represents the most likely source of trouble. An extended absence by any Los Angeles star (Nacua, Garrett, Donald, McDuffie, etc.) would degrade the club’s chances to win, but the critical nature of the position, and the lack of a dependable, seasoned back-up quarterback stand out as the potential Kryptonite to a Rams championship season.