Sean McVay stood at the podium with tears in his eyes on Sunday night at Lumen Field in Seattle. He looked like a man who had just let the Rams season slip through his fingers.
The Rams didn’t lose the NFC Championship Game solely because of a special teams mistake or a defense finally broke after bending so many times. They lost 31–27 to the Seahawks because of a series of conservative decisions that grew louder with every passing minute, decisions that will echo long after the plane touches down back at LAX.
The moment arrived early in the third quarter.
Trailing 17–13, the Rams finally found oxygen. Their defense, gasping all night, forced a punt. Momentum tilted. Then it vanished. Xavier Smith slipped, the ball popped loose, and Seattle recovered.
One play later, the Seahawks were in the end zone.
A four-point deficit became 11 in the blink of an eye.
As McVay admitted later, “You feel like we’re going to take the momentum, and then they score on the very first play after we turn it over. That was a tough one. That one was costly.”
Still, championship teams respond.
Matthew Stafford did. He carved Seattle up and hit Davante Adams for a two-yard touchdown. And here came decision number one. Down five, McVay kicked the extra point instead of going for two and cutting it to a field goal. Safe. Sensible.
But eventually it was costly.
When Stafford later dropped a perfect 34-yard strike into the hands of Puka Nacua at the left pylon, the same choice appeared again. Down four, McVay once more took the extra point. Had this been the fourth quarter, no one doubts he’d chase the math. But this was still late in the third quarter, and McVay chose patience over pressure.
Seattle made him pay.
The Rams’ first drive of the fourth quarter was a slow burn — 14 plays, 84 yards, nearly seven and a half minutes. They converted one fourth down and faced another, 4th-and-4 from the Seattle six. McVay ran towards the sideline official, timeout in mind, then pulled back.
The pass fell incomplete. Season over.
“I thought about it, and didn’t decide to do it,” McVay said of the timeout. “Obviously it didn’t work out for us.”
That’s the problem. The obvious only shows itself after the clock hits zero.
Had McVay gone for two earlier, that drive changes entirely. Field goal instead of desperation. Strategy instead of scramble. Instead, the Rams got the ball back with 25 seconds, no timeouts, and a miracle needed.
“I’m pretty numb right now,” McVay admitted afterward.
Understandably so. The youngest coach to ever win a Super Bowl now finds himself sleepless in Seattle, replaying choices that didn’t look fatal in real time, but proved decisive in the end.
“I’ll have to go back and look at it,” McVay said of those decisions after the gut-wrenching loss. “But there was other opportunities we could have converted on.”
Hindsight may be 20–20. Championships, though, are decided in the gray.
