When the fourteen-point underdog New England Patriots upset the “Greatest Show on Turf” in 2002, it was the beginning of something really special in the state of Massachusetts. Former Rams wide receiver Ricky Proehl was not completely wrong when he said the words “Tonight, a dynasty is born” before St. Louis lost in stunning fashion 20-17. There was a dynasty born that day, it just happened to be the other team that would serve as the standard of the NFL for the next twenty seasons. Over fifteen years later, the Patriots and Rams would face off against each other in yet another Super Bowl, and the outcome would stay the same. But two seasons after that, New England would see their once promising and unstoppable run come to an end against this same team. That Wild Card loss against the Tennessee Titans in 2019 was painful since it was the last time Tom Brady suited up as a Patriot, but their latest matchup in 2020 might have been even worse. Let’s go back to 2001 and see how this history between these two teams began, and how everything has shaped out for these two franchises since that forever-remembered Super Bowl.
The Patriots Dynasty Starts and Ends With the Rams
#1: The First Time in 2001
Before the Patriots and Rams met in the Superdome in February of 2002, the whole country got somewhat of a Super Bowl preview in the old Foxboro Stadium on a Sunday night in November. St. Louis was not as huge of a favorite as they would be three months later, but nobody expected this to be that much of a contest. Sure New England was 5-4 and had done well with their backup quarterback Tom Brady after their starter Drew Bledsoe was on the sideline due to injury, but this is the Greatest Show on Turf that everybody was watching. They had the most unstoppable offense in the league that season with so much firepower on all three levels, and their defense was just as stout themselves, so they were the easy Super Bowl favorites for a reason.
The game started out the way that many at the time could have expected. Brady threw an interception on his third pass attempt of the night, and the Rams immediately marched right down the field and scored a touchdown. After another stalled-out drive, it looked like St. Louis was going to have yet another convincing win on their resume, but Kurt Warner threw two consecutive interceptions that included a pick-six, and New England was somehow in the driver’s seat with a 10-7 lead. On the following possession, Jeff Wilkins missed a 42-yard field goal, and it just felt like the Rams fell right into a trap. Unfortunately, they still won the game for a reason. The Patriots just had way too many turnovers and St. Louis got points off of all of them. Although Tom Brady threw a touchdown pass to David Patten to make it a one-score game with seven minutes left, their defense was just worn out at that point and couldn’t get the hot-shot Rams off of the field until the clock ran out. Even with a two-interception performance from Warner, he still threw for 400 yards and three touchdowns, and they held on to beat New England 24-17.
This was a winnable game for the Patriots, one that was in their hands, but they just kept giving it away time and time again. But throughout the game, Bill Belichick kept finding wrinkles in this Rams offense and knew that if they were to see each other in the Super Bowl, they were going to come out with an entirely different game plan. Even Mike Martz knew that this was the toughest team that they went up against and that they would eventually see each other again down the road.
#2: Super Bowl 36
Lo and behold, the rematch was set in New Orleans on February 3, 2002. The odds-makers and media pundits were saying that the Patriots were just happy and extremely fortunate to be there because they all believed that the St. Louis Rams were on the verge of starting a dynasty. Who could blame them? They had the best quarterback in football at the time, a future Hall of Fame running back in Marshall Faulk, an unstoppable wide receiver duo of Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, the best offensive line in the league that season, and an extremely underrated defense that was at the peak of their game. They thought that the Patriots simply overachieved in their previous matchup and that the playoffs were just going to awaken a different type of beast. Well, technically it did, but that just happened to be that of the Patriots’ defense.
The entire game plan for New England was simple: play extremely physically, completely knock them off their spot, and to not give them an inch of movement. Through the first forty-five minutes, that worked to perfection. The Rams turned the ball over three times, Kurt Warner threw a pick-six to Ty Law to give New England their first seven points of the night, and New England was leading 17-3 at the start of the fourth quarter. St. Louis was flat-out getting punked, and the craziest part about this performance was that their defense had only allowed ten points. The Patriots’ offense at least did not turn the ball over, but the only time they got in the end zone was off of an interception from Otis Smith, so the Rams were making New England earn every single yard that came their way. When the fourth quarter began, St. Louis finally got their focus back and returned to their normally scheduled programming, scoring with ease on offense and they eventually tied the game at seventeen with about 1:37 left to go. One can never forget the late John Madden saying that when the Patriots get the ball back, they should just run out the clock and play for overtime since they were backed up at their own seventeen yard line with no timeouts. But this is where the legend of Tom Brady begins. With that little time left on the clock in those circumstances, he marched his team down the field in eight plays, setting Adam Vinatieri up for a game-winning 48-yard field goal. When the kick went right down the middle, the world was shocked and gleeful at what just happened. A 14-point favorite that was this close to cementing themselves as the Goliath of the league was taken down by one of the greatest Cinderella stories that the NFL has seen. What has happened since then? Oh, just wait and see.
#3: Tom Brady Becomes The Winningest QB in 2016
After Super Bowl 36, the Patriots and Rams headed towards completely different paths. By the 2004 season, the only remaining members from that Greatest Show on Turf offense were Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt. Kurt Warner had been released, Marshall Faulk retired, and head coach Mike Martz would not be with the Rams for that much longer. Even though they made the playoffs in both ‘03 and ‘04, they had only won one playoff game in that span and were heading into an inevitable rebuild period. Martz was eventually fired in 2006, and the team has not made it back to the playoffs since. In 2016, the Rams moved out of St. Louis and made a new home in Los Angeles, the first time that they would play in that city since the early 1990s. Jeff Fisher was in his fifth year as the head coach and they just drafted quarterback Jared Goff with their first overall pick, so the Rams were hoping that this would finally be the beginning of a more promising chapter. The Marc Bulger experiment did not last too long, Sam Bradford was not the star-studded prospect that he was coming out of college, and Goff was seen as the next difference maker. By the time the Rams had to head to Gillette Stadium to play the Patriots, he was making just his second start in the league, so this was not exactly the most comfortable scenario for this football team. Trying to keep their season alive at 4-7, LA was not expected to win at all, because New England was just that superior.
There’s no need to talk about what has happened to the Patriots since then because everyone knows the story. They won their first Super Bowl, they won two more in the next three seasons, they tormented the AFC for years and years, and have now had four banners hanging in their stadium by December of 2016. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are the undisputed best quarterback-head coach duo in the league, and it was going to take a little longer for this dynastic run to come to an end. Even though they were expected to blow out the Rams at home, there was a little something extra that New England was playing for that day. With a victory, Tom Brady would be the all-time quarterback leader in career victories, passing Peyton Manning with 201.
Would this be a down-to-the-wire trap game that the Patriots barely escape from? Foolish optimism. All it took was a handoff to LeGarrette Blount on a fourth and one for the game to get out of hand. New England might have needed four Stephen Gostkowski field goals just for them to lead by double-digits, but they were still ten times better than Los Angeles that day. Jared Goff got sacked four times and threw two interceptions, Todd Gurley was held to under forty yards on eleven carries, and the offense could not get in the end zone until a garbage time drive with 1:15 left in the game. It was an expected blowout victory that nobody had any feelings towards, with the exception of the Patriots helping their quarterback take his place at the top of an impressive record.
New England went on to win their final four remaining games of the regular season to finish 14-2, as well as earning their fifth Lombardi Trophy in the history of the franchise. As for Los Angeles, things went from bad to worse within the snap of a finger. The Rams lost their final four games of the year, which meant that Goff had not earned a single game in his rookie season. Jeff Fisher was fired after a 42-14 blowout defeat to the Atlanta Falcons just one week later, but once they hired Sean McVay, the fortunes of the franchise would be forever changed.
#4: Super Bowl 53
In 2017, the Rams went from being one of the biggest jokes in the NFL to a promising playoff contender. Sean McVay completely transformed the culture around the building and boosted up the confidence of several key players on the roster. Jared Goff had his career revived and earned his first career Pro Bowl nod, Todd Gurley was the Offensive Player of the Year after leading the league in rushing touchdowns, and Aaron Donald won the first Defensive Player of the Year award of his career. Even though they lost in the Wild Card at home to the Atlanta Falcons, the future was so promising and bright. One season later, LA was more dynamic and exciting to watch. They clinched the second-best record in the NFC, they ran all over the Dallas Cowboys in the divisional round, and they held on to beat the New Orleans Saints in the conference championship game to advance to their first Super Bowl since 2002. However, if the Rams were to overcome their demons, there was a familiar foe that they had to get past.
Even in a “down year” for the New England Patriots, they still find a way to win games when they matter most and get to the Super Bowl. A year prior in 2017, Tom Brady won his third career MVP and led his team to the big dance once again, but Nick Foles and the Philadelphia Eagles made history of their own. In 2018, the Patriots were struggling to have any consistency on both sides of the ball. They were skittish on the road, the offense was up-and-down, and the defense never looked as dominating as they had been in the past. They might have clinched the second seed in the AFC with an 11-5 record, but the media was writing the team off before the playoffs started. But after they demolished the Los Angeles Chargers at home in the divisional round, the Patriots let everybody know that they were still there. In a back-and-forth showdown with Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in the conference championship, Tom Brady got the ball to start in overtime and never gave up the ball, converting three straight third downs to set up the game-winning touchdown for Rex Burkhead. For the second time, the Patriots were up against the Rams, and they were the favorites this time around.
Both teams had highly potent offenses with two elite quarterbacks and a bunch of playmakers, but their defenses were not exactly near the top of the rankings. Many were thinking that this was going to be another high-scoring affair, but things headed in the opposite direction. For as much of a genius as Rams defensive coordinator Wade Phillips was, he was not exactly Bill Belichick, and the hoodie crafted the perfect game plan to shut down Sean McVay’s offense. It was also the same strategy that he used to beat Mike Martz’s Greatest Show on Turf just seventeen years earlier: play extremely physical and don’t let them blink for a second. Goff was under duress the entire night and the running game was held to just 57 yards, but the game was somehow tied at three heading into the fourth quarter. The Patriots were the furthest from perfect to put it lightly. Besides Julian Edelman carving up LA’s secondary for 141 yards on ten catches, the only other pass-catching option that bothered to show up was their Hall of Fame tight end Rob Gronkowski. Chris Hogan failed to come up with a catch on six targets, Phillip Dorsett has not even targeted the whole game, their third-best receiver was Cordarrelle Patterson with two catches, and even James White was held to one reception. Brady didn’t make things any better with an interception on his opening drive and three points through forty-five minutes, so this offense was out of sync and frustrating to watch. However, the whole momentum of the game shifted with just under ten minutes remaining. It started with a play-action throw down the seam to Gronkowski that set the Patriots up near midfield. Then a few plays later, Brady launched it down the left sideline to Gronkowski again, and he made an incredible diving catch with two defenders chasing him close to the two-yard line. Right after that, the first-round rookie Sony Michel finally headed into the end zone for the first touchdown of the Super Bowl, and New England led, 10-3.
Now it was Jared Goff’s turn to put the team on his back because if he were to successfully tie up this ball game under the circumstances, his story could very well have a better ending. The drive started out promising and effective, which is what you normally see with a Sean McVay offense. Goff drove his team in field goal range with 4:25 remaining and two timeouts, so they had plenty of chances to get back in the game. Unfortunately, those fell out of his hands with costly mistakes. On second and ten at the New England 27-yard line, Patriots defensive coordinator Brian Flores dialed up a cover zero blitz to rattle the third-year quarterback. Goff heaved an end zone shot off his backfoot, but the ball was underthrown and it got intercepted by Stephon Gilmore. On the ensuing possession, the Patriots made the Rams burn all of their timeouts, and they did just enough to have Stephen Gotskowski ice the game with a 41-yard field goal. In one of the sloppiest Super Bowls in NFL History, the Patriots won a league-leading sixth Lombardi Trophy with a 13-3 victory. It’s like 2001 all over again. The Rams had a way better offense and more talent on the field, but when you’re going up against Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, you’re not as ready as you might think.
#5: The Rams Finally Get The Last Laugh
Two years after the Rams had their hearts crushed by the Patriots in the Super Bowl once again, it was time for them to finally have some vengeance in their house in 2020. They made a few tweaks with their roster and coaching staff, but a majority of the core was still there. Sean McVay was heading into his fourth year as the head coach with Jared Goff as his quarterback, Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp were still the top two targets, and Aaron Donald was on pace to win his third Defensive Player of the Year award in just four seasons. However, they were not the dynamic threats that they were two years ago. In fact, Jared Goff was going through a major slump and decline, which was alarming since the Rams had given him a contract extension worth $33.5 million per year. Leading into their Week 14 Thursday night matchup with the Patriots, LA was still 8-4 and very well in control of their destiny, but they just had to hope that Goff would not cost his team a chance of making the playoffs. But New England was trying to do the same as well.
After Tom Brady left the team in the offseason, nobody knew who the starting quarterback would be for the New England Patriots. Before training camp began, it was expected that second-year guy Jarrett Stidham would get an opportunity, but not before they signed Cam Newton to a veteran minimum contract in July. When the season began, things started out pretty fine. They were 2-1, their running game was impossible to stop, and the defense was still playing at a very elite level so it was like the Patriots were picking up where they left off. But then Cam got COVID, the injuries kept piling up on the defensive side, and they fell into a four game losing streak with no hope of a potential playoff spot. However, a switch flipped and New England went on a bit of a run, winning four of their next five to get right back into the race at 6-6. Their victories were not exactly inspiring or perfect, but legitimate victories against the Baltimore Ravens and Arizona Cardinals will inject a lot of optimism in the hearts of many Patriots fans. Before they played the Rams in Week 14, New England had already demolished the Los Angeles Chargers 45-0 in that same stadium, so the Patriots were going to be well rested and prepared. Knowing that both teams were in the playoff race, whomever won this was going to have a better shot of playing an extra month.
The minute that linebacker John Simon jumped offsides that allowed Cam Akers to take off for a 35 yard, the Patriots knew that they were in trouble. Even though the Rams offense was held to just seventeen points, it was a breakout game for the rookie running back, who finished the night with 171 yards and single-handedly willed the Rams offense to victory. Goff only threw for 137 yards, Kupp and Woods were held to just five catches each, and the team still won the game by twenty-one points. All of it was thanks to their relentless and intimidating defense, which was ironically coached by Brandon Staley of all guys. The Rams offense at least had a pulse, which was nothing to say about the Patriots that night. Cam Newton had nowhere to throw the football or anywhere to run either. He got sacked four times, threw a momentum-swinging pick six at the start of the second quarter, and the offense as a whole could not score a single touchdown. Was it a convincing 24-3 blowout for the Rams? Absolutely not. But a win is a win, and it was about time that this team got their comeuppance against a team that has haunted this franchise for over twenty years. Two times they had a chance to rewrite history and both times they failed, which allowed the greatest dynasty in NFL History to crush teams that tried to stand in their way.
After this statement performance, both the Rams and Patriots appeared to slide off by losing two of their final three regular season games, but only one got to be in the playoffs. LA was lucky to be on the winning side as the sixth seed in the NFC, and even upset their division Seattle Seahawks on the road with a stunning 30-20 victory in the Wild Card. For the record, just two weeks before that, the Rams lost to this same team in that same stadium 20-9 with a chance to win the division, so Jalen Ramsey said it best when Seattle should take their hats and t-shirts down to Cabo. One week later, the team came up short against the eventual MVP Aaron Rodgers in the Divisional Round. Later that offseason, Jared Goff was traded to the Detroit Lions for Matthew Stafford, and the Rams found themselves as Super Bowl champions for the first time since February of 2000. It might not have been the Greatest Show on Turf in 2001, nor was it the revived Rams in 2018, but Sean McVay delivered on his promise to bring the organization a championship that had been ripped away from them for over two decades.
As for the Patriots, they just went on a worse and worse down slide. In 2020, they missed the playoffs with a 7-9 record, but it wouldn’t be long before they made it back to the playoffs. The team might have clinched the sixth seed in the AFC thanks to a promising rookie quarterback in Mac Jones and a rock-solid defense, but all of that completely collapsed in the Wild Card against Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills, who hung seven straight touchdown drives in a 47-17 beatdown. In 2022, they barely missed the postseason at 8-9, before the Bill Belichick era came to a crushing end with a 4-13 campaign the following year. When New England beat the Rams 20-17 in New Orleans, they went on to experience some of their proudest and most memorable moments that will forever be recorded in the history books. After they beat them for a second time in Atlanta, it was the Patriots that found themselves into an unthinkable rebuild. How ironic. Their journey starts with one of the most memorable upsets in sports history and ends with no fight or fire left.
