The Los Angeles Rams were the closest team to beating both of the last two Super Bowl winners in the playoffs, but fell shy of the Super Bowl in 2024 and 2025. The Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks have now won the last two Super Bowls after their closest competition to winning was clearly the Rams, and some would rank the \u201824 Eagles and \u201825 Seahawks as two of the best teams of recent times.<\/p>\n
But are they as good as the \u201899 Rams \u201cGreatest Show on Turf\u201d?<\/p>\n
One stat that still leans in the Rams\u2019 favor is point differential: The St. Louis +308 point differential in 1999 is still the best of any Super Bowl champion in the last 26 years, per ESPN Research:<\/p>\n
The Rams went +284 in the regular season and then won 49-37, 11-6, and 23-16 in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind that the Rams had one fewer game to play in the regular season than the Seahawks and Eagles, which could go both ways. That game could work more in their favor or against them.<\/p>\n
The \u201899 Rams had NINE wins in the regular season by more than 20 points. Nine. With a 9.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s Eagles had four such games in the regular season.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Seahawks had five.<\/p>\n
(Both the Eagles and Seahawks had another blowout win in the playoffs, but still fell well shy of St. Louis\u2019s nine regular season games of 21+ victories in 1999.)<\/p>\n
Another aspect to that Greatest Show on Turf that gives them an advantage over the last 26 Super Bowl winners is the legacy behind the Rams team that year. The unbelievable story of Kurt Warner and then unparalleled talent around him from Marshall Faulk to Orlando Pace to Isaac Bruce to Torry Holt.<\/p>\n
Sam Darnold\u2019s story has a similar movie-like quality to it. But he\u2019s far less \u201cout of nowhere\u201d than Warner, having been a top-3 pick and a quarterback who won 14 games with the Vikings last year prior to losing to the Rams in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
So I think people might remember the \u201899 Rams more than any other team of this era because the dominance of that season wasn\u2019t just impressive, it was also totally unexpected. It was one of the worst teams of the previous season, with an unknown quarterback, beating most of their opponents into a pulp in 1999.<\/p>\n
There are many ways to measure the impact of the Greatest Show on Turf that will make you remember what they did in 1999. But let\u2019s be honest: Most fans could never forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Rams were the closest team to beating both of the last two Super Bowl winners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2079],"tags":[7,1014,58,12153,2444,2611,6,424],"class_list":{"0":"post-743050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-rams","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-los-angeles","10":"tag-los-angeles-rams","11":"tag-los-angeles-rams-history","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-losangelesrams","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-rams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116047838979288984","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}