The Los Angeles Rams suffered a shocking loss to the Carolina Panthers last weekend. This weekend, the Rams bounced back with a dominant performance from start to finish against the Arizona Cardinals.
Head coach Sean McVay was not surprised by the bounce-back performance after what he witnessed from his team during the week.
“I thought the guys did a great job,” McVay said after the game, according to Pro Football Talk. “This is a mentally tough group. This is a resilient group. You have to earn it. I thought they had a great week of preparation. I thought even just the maturity of — even some of the stuff where I wasn’t around a little bit, just because of what I was dealing with — just the way they handle it. These are grown men, and they do such a great job.
“This is a player-led team. I can’t say enough about what a great job our coaches do [and] I don’t mean that to be minimizing them at all, but we have a lot of really great leaders in that locker room. I think they take the ownership, initiative of what we want to be about and how you ultimately want to be able to respond, not react, when we do have some of those setbacks. This is exactly in alignment with what we wanted, and now we have to continue to build on it.”
McVay traveled to Arizona separately from the rest of the team after coming down with an illness, and emphasized that he was just trying to be as responsible as possible.
“Just wanted to be smart [and] not give ourselves a chance of giving it to anybody else because of how contagious this can be,” he said. “Hopefully I didn’t by passing out game balls, trying to do the fist bump as much as you can. You realize how out of the norm it is for me — I’m a big hugger so hopefully I’ll feel better and can get back to being normal with these guys because I don’t like this. I felt good. I don’t want to get too descriptive with you but we fought through it and ultimately, the guys did a great job. I’m really proud of them.
“I think this is a cool reflection of the coaching staff in general, too. It was a good step in the right direction, and now we have to continue to build on this.”
The Rams are back in first place in the NFC playoff picture, and if they can keep the positive momentum rolling, there’s no reason they can’t hang on to it and secure the coveted bye week for the playoffs.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.