The Los Angeles Rams are trying to win their third Super Bowl in franchise history, but the road to the first win of the season won’t come on Sunday. The Rams are off today and will not come back until Monday night against the New York Giants.
Super Bowl expectations were as high as ever coming into the 2026, and they can still get back there with a couple of wins in a row to wash the bitter taste of a 49ers loss out of their mouths. In the meantime, what do you think is the most satisfying or best
season in Rams franchise history that didn’t end in a Super Bowl win?
It can be your personal experience, like maybe it was the year you became a Rams fan or at a time something great happened in your own life. Or it can be based simply on the football. A time when you think the Rams were making football fun for you, it just didn’t end in a Super Bowl.
A few seasons that come to mind:
2023
Coming off of a 5-12 season, Sean McVay was questioning his commitment to the NFL. The Rams didn’t have a first-round pick to try and rebuild with and Aaron Donald’s salary accounted for more than 50% of all the money invested into the defense that year.
To make matters worse, Cooper Kupp missed the first month of the season and the Rams started 3-6.
But in the meantime, the rookie class looked amazing without a first-round pick:
- Puka Nacua was making history
- Kobie Turner and Byron Young were bargains on defense
- Steve Avila and Davis Allen were also rookie contributors
2023 is one of the best draft classes in team history, and since then has gotten even better with improvements by Warren McClendon, Desjuan Johnson, and the continued presence of Stetson Bennett and Davis Allen a few years later.
Then the Rams rebounded, winning seven of their last eight games and making the playoffs out of nowhere.
Just a one-point loss to the Lions separated L.A. from the second round of the postseason.
2017
Sean McVay took over a 4-12 team and immediately flipped the 32nd-ranked scoring offense to the top-ranked scoring offense. As usual, he did it without a first-round pick.
The emergence of Todd Gurley as an MVP runner-up and Jared Goff as a decent starting quarterback really saved the franchise’s potential plunging into the ocean if those picks had been busts, as they were starting to become under Jeff Fisher.
Cooper Kupp was one of the great picks of all-time for the Rams and Andrew Whitworth, Robert Woods were two of the best free agent signings. Aaron Donald won his first career Defensive Player of the Year award.
The Rams did lose to the Falcons in the wild card round, but had set themselves up for a deep Super Bowl run in 2018.
1979
One of the all-time underdog stories, the Rams held a fourth quarter lead in the Super Bowl against the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers.
L.A. had finished 9-7.
Pittsburgh went 12-4 and had already won three Super Bowls in the 70s.
A 24-yard touchdown pass from Lawrence McCutcheon to Ron Smith gave the Rams a 19-17 lead in the third quarter, but they just couldn’t hang on.
A Cinderella team that had been 5-6 midseason, the Rams won four in a row, then made the playoffs at 9-7. Jack Youngblood has since been credited with 18 sacks that year. Wendell Tyler led the league with 5.1 yards per carry. Larry Brooks was an All-Pro defensive tackle.
The Rams upended the Cowboys and Bucs in the playoffs to reach the Super Bowl, a win that would have been historic. I’m sure for many fans reading this, 1979 still was historic anyway.
