The Rams were the first NFL team to play in Los Angeles. (There had been the earlier Los Angeles Buccaneers in 1926, but they were purely a road team. Not surprisingly, a team that never got revenue from a home crowd only lasted one season.) The Rams were dominant in the late-40s up to the mid-50s, going to four NFL Championship Games from 1949 to 1955 and winning one.
After that, the Rams very quickly took a trip to bad team hell. They finished dead last in the Western Division in 1956 and had just one winning season in the decade following their last trip to the championship game. Slowly but surely, the Rams began to build a great team, hiring the great George Allen as coach and acquiring such players as Roman Gabriel, Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen and many others. By the late-60s, the Rams were poised to make a run for a title.
What Was So Great About Them?
This picture says it all:
Of course, the line-up I mentioned is actually a misnomer for the era I'm talking about. Grier retired after the 1966 season and was replaced by both Roger Brown and Diron Talbert (yeah, he was so good, he needed two guys to replace him). Ultimately, the line was broken up shortly after George Allen was dismissed following the 1970 season.
But the line became Fearsome AGAIN, this time with Merlin Olsen being the savvy veteran rather than the pupil. Jack Youngblood, Fred Dryer and Larry Brooks made up the new line and were also dominant in this era.
So to sum up, the Rams of this era were awesome thanks to their dominant defense, particularly on the line. Eight of the top ten defenses in team history in terms of points allowed per game fit into the 67-79 window.
How Good Were They?
Between 1967 and 1979, the Rams won 130 games. Only the Cowboys and Raiders won more games during this time. The Rams made the playoffs nine times in 13 tries, winning their division nine times, including seven straight from 1973 to 1979 (an NFL record that stands to this day). The team won 11 or more games five times, four of those happened when the NFL only had a 14-game schedule. The Rams also made five NFC Conference Championship Games from 1974 to 1979 and went to one Super Bowl.
39 players were selected to at least one Pro Bowl and 13 made 1st Team All-Pro at least once. Five former players in this era were later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
So Why Didn't They Win Any Championships?
The Rams were a great team, but they weren't the only great team in the NFC during this era. The Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings teams of the 70s were the collective banes of the Rams' existence. The Rams lost nine playoff games from 1967 to 1979, seven of those loses were to either the Cowboys or Vikings. If they could beat one of them, they'd lose to the other in the next round.
The Rams were very much the third best team in the conference for a simple reason- while they had a great defense just like the Cowboys and Vikings, the Rams didn't have great offenses. The Cowboys had Roger Staubach at quarterback and had reliable running games before Tony Dorsett (and when they got Dorsett, they had an elite running game). The Vikings had Fran Tarkenton, one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, and a pretty underrated rushing attack led by Chuck Foreman.
While the Rams had a very good running back in Lawrence McCutcheon (who made five Pro Bowls in his career), their passing attack left a lot to be desired. Here are the quarterbacks that started at least one game for the Rams from 1967 to 1979 in chronological order:
Roman Gabriel
Pete Beathard
John Hadl
James Harris
Ron Jaworski
Pat Haden
Joe Namath
Vince Ferragamo
Jeff Rutledge
Just looking at that list, there are some pretty impressive names there. If you dig a little deeper, suddenly, it's not so great.
Gabriel and Hadl were the best quarterbacks for the Rams during this time. Gabriel is one of the truly underrated quarterbacks of the 60s and 70s and is a dark-horse Hall of Fame candidate in my opinion. Unfortunately, the team cut him loose after the 1972 season (he was 32 and it was probably the right choice, but he still had some stuff left, going to the Pro Bowl in 1973 with the Eagles).
Hadl spent one full season with the Rams and was selected 1st Team All-Pro in 1973. But Hadl was also old (33 in his first season with the Rams) and that 1973 season was very much an anomaly for him as it was the only season in his career where he threw twice as many touchdowns as interceptions (being generous, he was the Brett Favre of the 60s, throwing a shitload of picks but also throwing for a ton of yards). He was dealt to the Packers in the middle of the 1974 season.
Harris and Haden both went to Pro Bowls, but were otherwise unspectacular. Jaworski eventually became a good quarterback, but that was in the 80s when he was on the Eagles. Namath was beyond washed up and started just four games in 1977, the last season of his career. Beathard and Rutledge were used mostly as backups.
That leaves Ferragamo. And irony of ironies, he quarterbacked the worst Rams team of this era, yet the team still made it to the Super Bowl. The Rams, a 9-7 division winner, beat the Dallas Cowboys on the road and shut out the unlikely-playoff-host Tampa Bay Buccaneers to make their first ever Super Bowl, their first title game in nearly 25 years. Then they dove headfirst into the buzz-saw that was the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 70s.
In all honesty, the Rams played the Steelers extremely well in Super Bowl XIV. They were never down more than four points through the third quarter and had taken the lead or tied everything up three times in the game. At the end of the third quarter, the Rams led the Steelers 19-17.
The Rams outplayed the Steelers on the ground and only gave up one turnover to the Steelers' three. The Steelers were flagged for penalties six times while the Rams were only penalized twice.
But in the end, the Steelers scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to win their fourth Super Bowl in six years by a score of 31-19. What went wrong? Terry Bradshaw threw two touchdowns to three interceptions. (He won his second consecutive Super Bowl MVP, though honestly, John Stallworth probably deserved it more, with three catches for 121 yards and a touchdown.) Bradshaw however wasn't sacked once and threw for over 300 yards. Ferragamo on the other hand threw one touchdown and one pick, but only threw for 212 yards and was sacked four times. If there was any one thing that sunk the Rams that night, it was the fact that Ferragamo was under a ton of pressure and, frankly, wasn't all that great to begin with.
Aftermath
That was it for the Rams as far being legitimate contenders went. They went to two other NFC Championship Games in the 80s, but those teams weren't great and were dismantled both times by better teams (the more things change...). The Rams did finally win another championship, but not until after they moved away from Los Angeles (and Anaheim) and were based in St. Louis, Missouri.
But the Rams can hang their hats on the fact that they were still a force of a team for over a decade. They won more consecutive division titles than any team before or since. They boasted historically great defenses and big stars. They were a hard-hitting, imposing, gritty team right in the middle of showy, cosmetically-oriented Hollywood.
If the rest of the team had been as fearsome as its defense, maybe the Rams would have had more than one championship in Los Angeles.
