All the jokes have been told, and all the punchlines registered about football in Los Angeles. If you’re an NFL fan, you’ve certainly heard them, and you’ve likely also told them.
You can start with the “size does matter” argument about the StubHub Center, which the Los Angeles Chargers call home. It holds 27,000 for NFL games, and for most of this season it hasn’t needed to.
About 12 miles away, the Los Angeles Rams are in their second season at the extremely antiquated and crumbling Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Though USC football has long been the biggest showcase in that stadium, it still boasts tons of bad seats, and poorly serviced concessions and bathrooms. Also, the standard Los Angeles traffic, even on a Sunday afternoon, makes one pause and pause again before committing to attending a game there.
The Coliseum’s been hosting events since 1946 and even as the anchor for the 1984 Summer Olympics, it felt, well, “lived in” to a considerable degree. Fast forward 33 years later and it’s far, far from ideal for a modern-day NFL franchise or its supporters.
But beyond the obvious infrastructure issues, and the temporary feel to both teams and their current homes, this weekend may be the biggest professional football weekend in Los Angeles lost both its teams after the 1994 season.
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The Rams are a 9-3 football team with quite a window ahead of them to be excellent. The offensive genius of 31-year-old head coach Sean McVay seems unquestioned now, with so many teams looking to replicate that hire this coming off-season. They have a franchise QB in Jared Goff — even if that was seriously in doubt 12 months ago at this time — a star running back in Todd Gurley and playmakers galore on both sides of the football.
On Sunday they host a 10-2 Philadelphia Eagles squad that until very recently was seen as a shoe-in for Super Bowl LII both because of who they are and the added benefits of the Aaron Rodgers injury and the Ezekiel Elliott suspension. But it seems like the New Orleans Saints, Minnesota Vikings and, yes, even the Rams, are loathe to surrender the conference just yet.
Fox Sports is so jacked up for this matchup, they’re hosting their studio show at the Coliseum — a prospect that would have been unthinkable back in September, when the optimistic expectation for the Rams might have been an 8-8 season, doubling last year’s win total.
Meanwhile, the Chargers are playing about as well as any 6-6 team in recent memory. Unprompted, I will tell you they’re the AFC team the Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots have zero interest in meeting in January in either the divisional playoff or the AFC Championship Game. The Patriots would sign up for anybody else, the Pittsburgh Steelers included.
Why? Look at not just what they’ve done, but how they’re doing it. They’re 4-2 since an 0-4 start (also important: three of the four losses came by a combined seven points), and have outscored their opposition 101–40 on their current three-game win streak.
(Though, yes, I will grant you the “Nathan Peterman Game” is helping to skew those numbers.)
Also, the Bolts’ only two losses since Oct. 1 include an OT game in Jacksonville, and an eight-point defeat to the Patriots.
Joey Bosa is as feared a pass rusher as there is now in the league, Melvin Ingram isn’t far behind that stature, and Philip Rivers is playing as consistently as he has in nearly a decade. He’s thrown 17 touchdowns versus just three interceptions since Week 3. That’s major progress for a man who turned 36 this week and has led the entire league in interceptions in two of the last three seasons.
So, no, I’m not ready to predict an all-Los Angeles Super Bowl — not by a long shot — but I’m convinced both teams are going to make the playoffs, and I’m leaning towards both hosting home playoff games as division winners. Maybe more significantly, given the amount of young talent on both teams, it’s not so far-fetched to think there will be some Rams/Chargers Super Bowl predictions for the 2018 season ahead.
All that goes to say: If the jokes about how bad it’s going in Los Angeles for the NFL are still out there, they’re increasingly falling on deaf ears.
