Super Bowl 2022: Rams cement legacies with win over Bengals

By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — About an hour after winning the Lombardi Trophy and Super Bowl MVP, Cooper Kupp hugged his son Cooper Jr. in the depths of SoFi Stadium. Cooper Jr. clung to his dad, not wanting to let go, as Kupp’s wife, Anna Marie, held their other son, Cypress, in her arms. 

Kupp kissed his wife. The two of them were laughing, those beautiful, "holy moly, we actually did it" kind of laughs.

Kupp still wore his uniform. Finally, Cooper Jr. released his father so Kupp could change. Anna Marie loaded the children onto the same golf cart that held Aaron Donald’s wife, Erica, and their kids. Everyone was grinning as Queen’s "We Are The Champions" blared from the Rams' locker room for the second time in 15 minutes. 

Von Miller’s parents, Von and Gloria, sat on folding chairs a few feet away. Von Senior held his son’s helmet, and Gloria FaceTimed someone. She stuck her tongue out, held up two fingers and said of her son, "He got a ring, but now he’s got two." She laughed. "I knew he could."

The Rams’ chief operating officer, Kevin Demoff, hugged his wife and kids next to the Millers. I asked him what winning felt like.

"It feels f---ing awesome," he said. "Lotta happy people in that locker room."

The Rams have been trying to secure a Super Bowl since they left St. Louis and a wake of angry fans who hoped they never would. The team has found a home in L.A., and after five winning seasons and two Super Bowl appearances, it’s starting to worm its way into the hearts of this sports-saturated, somewhat-detached town. 

While Bengals fans were definitely the loudest in the stadium on Sunday, Rams fans turned out, too, and the crowd noise after the win was impressive.

I asked Demoff if it feels like a relief to finally get the job done.

"No," he said. "It feels like a joy."

Down the hall, the scene was not so joyous. Quarterback Joe Burrow took about an hour to emerge from the locker room after leaving the field. His eyes were red, and he walked slowly, trying to hide the limp that was the result of being sacked for a seventh time in the fourth quarter.

Sunday’s game was close. Burrow is made of something stronger than human bones because he took hits delivered by the strongest defensive monsters in the game and managed to get back up each time. If the refs hadn’t suddenly felt the need to throw flags in the final minute after forgetting that penalties exist for the first 59, perhaps Burrow’s super-human toughness would have been enough, and the Bengals wouldn’t have lost 23-20.

But Cincinnati’s defensive stops were revoked because of penalties, and Kupp caught the game-winning, 1-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Matthew Stafford with 1:25 remaining. Burrow then failed to put his team in field-goal range so kicker Evan McPherson could send the game to overtime, and the Bengals lost.

Football is a game of inches, and sometimes those inches are the difference between elation and heartbreak. 

Burrow was certainly heartbroken after the game. He gave a very subdued media conference, and I’m pretty sure his voice cracked when he answered the first question about his knee, telling reporters that it "felt good." It didn’t look so good as he walked away from the podium. His tiger-printed suit and wide-brimmed hat gave off more depressing vibes than the fun ones they had radiated when Burrow arrived Sunday morning, still hopeful.

Burrow walked a little ways away before a Bengals staffer told him to turn back and hop onto a golf cart. Burrow obliged, slowly retreated and stared straight ahead without speaking to anyone in the vehicle as it putt-putted away from the scene of the loss.

Super Bowl LVI was a game of legacies. Every Super Bowl is, of course, but there was an enormous amount to prove for many of the Rams. The team bet the house on these players — because the Super Bowl takes a lot of singular talents to win — and the Rams were in "win now" mode. Each guy had a chance to make it clear that the only reason he hadn’t yet won a championship — or multiple — was that he wasn’t on the right team to do it.

In 13 years, Stafford had never won a playoff game with the Lions. Odell Beckham Jr. left the abysmal Giants to go to the abysmal Browns, then finally ended up in sunny Los Angeles in the middle of this season, with a locker room that welcomed him and a coach who wanted him in a building where there was finally hope. It felt right when he scored the first touchdown of the game (before getting hurt and being unable to play). 

You could almost imagine Baker Mayfield watching in the Browns’ stadium that those Progressive commercials pretend is his home, cursing the fact that perhaps Beckham's father was right. Maybe OBJ should have been targeted more in Cleveland.

And Beckham and Stafford aren’t the only incredibly talented misfit toys on Rams Island. After winning a Super Bowl with Peyton Manning in 2016, Miller was stuck on a defeated Broncos team until he was traded to L.A. Donald, who was drafted when the Rams were in St. Louis and suffered through many 7-9 and 8-8 seasons, has won every possible accolade in the NFL. All he needed was a shiny ring with many diamonds in it to signify total victory.

Now he, and everyone else on that team, has one. 

"We’re building a legacy," Donald said after the game, his daughter next to him at the podium. "Legacies are built not from individual stats but from team success. The ultimate goal is to be a world champion. I’ve been saying that for the past few years. To finally get the opportunity to feel this, be living in it right now, this time, this moment — it’s hard to put it in words right now."

On Sunday, every Rams player who had a monkey on his back shook it off. They all smoked cigars in the locker room. They wore their championship hats and carried bottles of champagne around the lowest concourse of SoFi, greeting their loved ones and finally breathing sighs of, if not relief, pure joy.

At the same time, Bengals owner Mike Brown silently walked through the concourse in his striped orange tie, looking like he was leaving a funeral with his family. After Burrow was whisked away, other players slowly trickled out of Cincinnati’s locker room. They put their diamond-studded jewelry back on, but the diamonds they already owned weren’t the diamonds they wanted. 

Guys stood around, looking a little dazed, unsure where to go. Receivers Tyler Boyd and Tee Higgins climbed onto the back of a golf cart and stared at the concrete walls as they left the building.

As Donald said, the 2021-22 season cemented legacies in L.A. It could also, despite the loss, be the start of a better legacy for Cincinnati. It could be the beginning of once and for all shedding the "Bungles" nickname. 

Burrow is, as defensive tackle DJ Reader called him in his postgame conference, a "once-in-a-generation" player. He is calm, cool and collected, and he has infused that locker room with a sense of true camaraderie. The Bengals have players surrounding him, including Ja’Marr Chase, Sam Hubbard, Vonn Bell, Evan McPherson, Tyler Boyd and countless others, who won’t stop talking about how much they all like one another.

That makes for an unbelievably dangerous team for others to face. And Cincinnati could be even more dangerous after this loss.

"We’re a young team," Burrow said. "You like to think that we’ll be back in this situation multiple times over the course of the next few years. We’ll take this and let it fuel you for the rest of our careers."

But teams are made up of individuals, and they need support. Someone — preferably an offensive lineman or two — must protect Joe Burrow, as I wrote a year-and-a-half ago. He was sacked 51 times in the regular season and 19 times in the postseason. I’m old enough to remember when he blew out his knee after Chase Young hit him hard in a November 2020 game.

Now, I’m sure Burrow would hate for any blame to be put on the Bengals’ offensive line. From covering him this postseason, I’ve learned that he’s the kind of QB who believes it’s his fault if he’s sacked because he didn’t avoid it. His father coached and called defenses, his brothers played on the defensive side of the ball in college, and Burrow has great respect for what defenders do. If they get him, it’s because they’re good — not because his O-line is bad. 

But also, his O-line is bad. Imagine if he had protection. Imagine what Burrow could do with a little more time in the pocket, the more magical throws he could come up with. 

To be fair, Cincinnati’s offensive line shortcomings aren’t even totally the offensive line’s fault. People need to be put in position to succeed, and the Bengals had an entire offseason to find the guys for those spots and help the players they had improve. They failed to do so. (Note: The Rams’ 2022 model is a great example of securing the necessary teammates for the ones you already have.) 

But if the Bengals organization will shell out for the players they need, and if Burrow attracts the attention of free agents who want to come to Cincinnati the way it seems he might, then this franchise is on to a good thing. These stars are young, and they’re already doing a lot of things right. It was surreal to watch Burrow throw a pass to Chase in the Super Bowl, the same guy with whom he won a College Football Playoff National Championship only two years ago (!!!).

As for Good Vibes Connoisseur McPherson, he said he expects to be in this position again soon. 

"We’ve got so much talent that is going to be around next year, and so, I feel like we are really not going to skip a beat and come in next year ready to come back [to the Super Bowl]," he said. "This has been a special group, and I have said this before, but I had the most fun playing football that I’ve ever had this year."

Cincinnati’s culture and team chemistry are tough to match, but the Rams did it. They surpassed the Bengals’ team bonds with the highest level of football, and they put to rest narratives that had dogged them. Someday, perhaps, Burrow and his teammates will be the ones hugging their families and popping champagne. 

But for now, the players who put in the time, suffered multiple heartaches and decided that enough was enough came away with the hardware to support their legacies of greatness. 

Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and cohost of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.