WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. - - — The Los Angeles Rams are heading to Santa Clara this Sunday to face-off against archival, the San Fransico 49ers, in one of their biggest remaining games on their regular season slate.
Los Angeles is coming off of another blowout victory after defeating the New Orleans Saints 34-10 at home.
Now comes the rematch against their divisional foe who has already defeated them once this season.
“This is an excellent opponent we're playing. We're familiar with them. We played them pretty recently, but it's always a great challenge,” coach Sean McVay said at Wednesday’s press conference. “We know that it's going to take 60 minutes and then maybe even then some like we knew what happened on the Thursday game.”
We all know what happened in that Week 5 matchup on Thursday night with the banged up 49ers missing Brock Purdy, Nick Bosa, George Kittle and their top three wide receivers walking in to SoFi Stadium and leaving with 26-23 overtime win.
It was a game most thought the Rams would win to take control of the NFC West early on but it didn’t happen. The Rams came out slow in that game and could not stay out of its own way to pick up the win.
A few glaring mistakes led to the tough loss for Los Angeles. First off with the Rams down 14-0 in the second quarter the offense was driving when an errant toss by quarterback Matthew Stafford to running back Blake Corum fail to the ground and was recovered by the 49ers. The Rams weren’t done shooting themselves in the foot as they had a chance to score on their first offensive drive of the second half but kicker Joshua Karty missed a 53 yard field goal. To make matters worse, with a chance to win the game late running back Kyren Williams fumbled at the SF 2 with 1:07 remaining in the fourth quarter.
The team’s final mistake ended the game when Los Angeles marched down the field, and facing fourth-and-1 at the San Francisco 11, coach McVay elected to go for it — only to call a running play that did not pick up the first down and he regretted it almost immediately.
It was the perfect example of a team giving a win away.
Los Angeles has won three straight games since that matchup and are playing some of their best football of the year.
McVay expects the Rams to be much improved since they last saw the 49ers.
“I think that there has been a lot of growth. I think the way that these guys work is…you always want to be able to improve throughout the course of the season, but I think the way that guys have played on offense and defense. I think there has been real positives.”
The 49ers come in once again dealing with injuries including missing star linebacker Fred Warner who is the anchor for their defense and the Rams offense will look to take advantage.
“Anytime you take Fred off the field, it's going to be different for sure,” wide receiver Davante Adams said. “They’re still the defense that they are. It’s the way that they’re coached. It’s the way that Fred has led them to be over there. No matter who's in there, we expect them to be able to play the same brand of football. Maybe not exactly like Fred would play, but guys are still going to be flying around.”
No matter who is on the field for the 49ers, this game will come down to the Rams not hurting themselves with costly mistakes to win the first of their two big back-to-back matchups against divisional foes.