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The Los Angeles Rams head into Super Bowl 56 against the Cincinnati Bengals on the backs of a huge NFC Conference title game victory over their biggest NFL rivals, the San Francisco 49ers. The Rams needed to get past a 49ers team that had beaten them in six straight contests and was extremely familiar with their offensive and defensive concepts. The Bengals, their opponents in the Super Bowl, can also be considered a familiar opponent. That's not because of historical matchups (these two teams are only guaranteed a game every four years) but because Bengals head coach, Zac Taylor, was the Rams' quarterbacks coach when they went to Super Bowl 53.
Taylor has modeled his offense in a similar way to Rams head coach Sean McVay in the sense that both prefer to use “11-personnel,” which is an NFL offensive personnel grouping that has a single tight end, one single running back (instead of the committee approach that a lot of terms currently employ,) and three wide receivers. The ability to produce out of this grouping is what has gotten both of these teams to this point, so do not expect them to sway much from what it took to get them here. If that holds, and both teams use three wideouts on the majority of the snaps, it will become an offensive game that many fans will be happy to watch.
Cooper Kupp will be getting his catches and yards; his chemistry with Rams QB Matthew Stafford is off the charts and is comparable perhaps only to the connection that Bengals QB Joe Burrow has with his top wide receiver, Ja'Marr Chase. Their ability to translate their on-field connection from their days at LSU has been a huge part of why Cincinnati is still alive.
Even though these two quarterbacks have an almost telekinetic power to communicate with their star receivers, they are too good of players and too big of names to be overlooked. That is what the main ingredient in a Super Bowl X-Factor is…the surprise. A true X-Factor is a player that the other team might not have at the top of their “have to stop” list, but probably should be. In that case, the Rams X-Factor in their Super Bowl 56 matchup with the Bengals is…
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Rams X-Factor vs. Bengals in Super Bowl 56
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Cam Akers
So far on the season, Akers has managed just 2.8 yards per carry on almost 60 rushes in the four games that he has played in since he returned from an Achilles tear suffered in July. Akers immediate insertion into the starting lineup over a player in Sony Michel that had been on a roll showed that the Rams have the utmost confidence in him as a runner. Once Akers fumbled twice against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and almost cost his team their season, McVay never wavered in putting him back out there in the next game. That sealed Cam's importance to this offense and sets him up to vindicate himself in a huge way with a big Super Bowl performance.
Despite the low yards per carry average, Akers has actually had some good runs in the four games. He has struggled to put up big numbers against some of the best run defenses in the NFL, but that can be expected. Everyone knows how good the Buccaneers and 49ers' run defenses are, and the Cardinals had just got back J.J. Watt (their best run-defender.) The Bengals, surprisingly, actually gave up fewer yards per carry in 2021 than the 49ers…and the Rams. So, why is Akers the X-Factor if he is likely just going to be bottled up yet again?
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The answer falls into a bit of a chess game between two former co-workers, McVay and Taylor. If the Bengals watch any of the Rams' recent games, they will see that they have been winning on the right arm of Stafford. If Cincinnati is paying too much attention to shutting down the Rams' passing attack, that creates three to four-man boxes for Akers to run against. In the contrast, if the Rams have been watching the way that the Bengals' offense has easily been moving the ball up and down the field, LA may be inclined to run the ball a little bit more to keep the ball away from Burrow and company. Both of those factors will lead to a big workload from the former Florida State Seminole. Akers' 2021 season story has been one for the books, and if he has any say in the ending, it will be a happy one for his entire organization.
