Every time a team wins the Super Bowl, there’s talk the following offseason about a potential championship hangover. That conversation is bound to happen about the Los Angeles Rams this year after they won Super Bowl LVI and proceeded to lose several key players in free agency, namely Von Miller and Darious Williams.
It’s only April and the question has already been asked of Matthew Stafford: How can the Rams avoid a Super Bowl hangover.
Unsurprisingly, he’s not worried about that possibility and hasn’t even thought about it much at all. He said this week that as long as the Rams just take it a day at a time and set short-term goals, they’ll be just fine come September.
“I don’t really think about it. Been a part of this game for a long time,” he said. “Like you said, it is the first Super Bowl win of my career and probably a lot of guys in there, as well. But if you play this game long enough, you understand what you did last year – good, bad, indifferent – doesn’t really have much bearing on what you do the following year and there are so many things you have to do to prepare and so many things you have to go correct or right for you during the season, as well. I think the easiest thing for me to do is just stay in the moment and not worry about what it’s gonna look like in September right now, or October, November, December. Just kind of sit here and say, OK, what do I need to accomplish today, this week, maybe the first two weeks, Phase 1, Phase 2. Just make those goals and things you’re trying to work on, make them short-term and stay in the moment as best you can.”
Stafford has never played a season that ended as late as the Rams’ 2021 campaign did. In fact, no team has because it was the league’s first 17-game season, and the Rams played an additional four games in the postseason.
As a result, they didn’t have much time to sit around and think about the magical season they had just put together because two months later, they’ve already reported for the offseason workout program.
With Stafford, Aaron Donald, Sean McVay, Jalen Ramsey and Cooper Kupp back in the mix for 2022, the Rams are once again expected to be a Super Bowl contender – and there’s really no reason to believe they won’t be.