After duking it out to 23-all at the end of regulation, the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers took things to extra innings for some free football at SoFi Stadium in the heart of Los Angeles County.
Kicking the ball away to start off overtime, Sean McVay and company found themselves down to the wire after his long-time foil Kyle Shanahan put his team up by three with a clutch field goal from new kicker Eddy Pineiro. While McVay tried his best to do the same, picking up steady yardage with Matthew Stafford leading the way, he was ultimately foiled by his own playcalling, with Kyren Williams earning zero yards on fourth and one to close out the game and lock San Francisco into first place in the NFC West, at least for now.
Asked about his decision to run the ball at the 11-yard line on fourth and one after the game, McVay told reporters it was a bad call on his part, taking full responsibility for the loss.
“It was a ball call,” McVay declared via ESPN's Sarah Barshop. “It was a bad call by me.”
In hindsight, the decision to risk the game on a run play when Stafford was on a roll in overtime will be debated heavily by fans of the Rams for weeks to come, as in-division wins can be hard to come by, even with the 49ers seemingly suffering injury after injury with each passing week. If the Rams just kick the chipshot field goal, they likely live to play another drive and could close out the game with a tie or even a win, depending on how things shake out.
Should the Rams have played more conservatively? Even McVay is willing to say yes, but in the end, even he had to admit that the Rams did more to lose the game than the 49ers did to win it, which, in a way, makes the loss worse.
“We had a chance to close the game out, and ultimately it didn’t go down for us,” McVay said via RamsWire. “There was a significant amount of things – for us to even be in it was a real credit to the resilience of the group. That’s not winning football tonight. There was a lot of really good plays at different points that kept us competitive, gives us a chance to go to overtime, but we certainly did more to lose that game than we did to win it, and it did compound, for sure.”
Now sitting at 3-2, the Rams find themselves with their first division loss of the season, which could be a major issue come January when things start to bottleneck. Had McVay made a different call, maybe that could have been different too.
