The NFL is comprised of 32 copycats, teams that use the creations of others — and some of the franchises are quite skilled at it. And others of the 32 not so much.
Things change, revolutionary concepts are borrowed, and sometimes the parasites win. And sometimes they lose. As a rookie journalist, I was taught that the only way to win in the NFL is via the draft. That — all the NFL traditionalist wisemen have told me through past 60 years — is the only way to win.
But Sunday’s upcoming Super Bowl LVI proves that it’s not always so.
We have the Rams vs. the Bengals in this Super Bowl — and they reached this game via different ideologies.
The Bengals, they restructured and won this season in the conventional manner. They drafted well. Joe Burrow, first off the board on the first round in 2020, to play quarterback — an essential addition for a rebuilding team. Ja’Marr Chase, fifth in the first round, in 2021 to catch Burrow’s passes. Two premium athletes out of Louisiana State’s collegiate national champions of 2019.
And a 4-11-1 team in 2020 re-emerged the next year to win the AFC championship, slithering through the playoffs, and becoming the opponent for the Rams in So-fi Stadium in the climax game of the season.
The Rams themselves endured spotty, chaotic seasons of rebuilding via the draft. They flubbed and dithered for years using the draft. Finally, they succeeded after 10 straight losing seasons. They qualified for Super Bowl LIII, vaulting from a 4-12 embarrassment two seasons before that.
They lost Super Bowl LIII without distinction against the Patriots. Flat, dull, they were restricted to a field goal in 13-3 dud of a football game. They had a young third-year quarterback, who had been selected first out of the board at the 2016 draft.
The Rams had traded up in that draft for the first pick. The expensive player they selected was Jared Goff. They claimed they had a treasure.
True enough, the Rams got the Super Bowl in the 2018 season via the traditional draft method. But when Goff arrived, the Rams were building the foundation around a young quarterback. They had already drafted Aaron Donald — an absolute treasure — in the first round in 2014.
The Rams discovered a hidden treasure in the 2017 draft. Cooper Kupp played college football at Eastern Washington, without much fanfare. He was picked on the third round. He was listed as the Rams’ fourth receiver.
Kupp would soon would become the Rams’ leading receiver. Injury kept Kupp from playing in the Rams’ dreadful Super Bowl LIII. But he is primed for Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI.
He was the NFL’s MVP this season. Not according to the electorate. But according to this non-voter, none of the vaunted quarterbacks played better in 2021. No other athlete was more valuable to his team.
Regardless, the Rams were lifted to this Super Bowl by violating the draft concept that been primary in the NFL since the middle 1930.
After losing to the Patriots three years ago, Sean McVay, the Rams’ young coach, became disenchanted with his team’s quarterbacking. It was lackluster. It lacked flamboyance. There weren’t enough Roman candles shooting into the grandstands at SoFi Stadium.
McVay was not particularly diplomatic in discussing his plight during the 2020 season. A condemning quote filtered out of the Rams’ locker room. It reached the ESPN website, ripe to be discovered eastward around the league.
“Our quarterback has got to take better care of the football,” McVay said after the Rams had three turnovers in a loss to the 49ers.
Admitting his outspokeness, at the end of the 2020 seasons, McVay amplified it when asked about Goff.
“Yeah, he’s our quarterback,” McVay told the LA media after a loss to the Packers, “right now.”
More: Green: Once passed over, Brady enters retirement as the GOAT (almost) at QB
More: Green: Winners on NFL’s biggest stage should be decided on field, not with a coin toss
A month later, the Rams ignited a sequence of trades and signings and maneuverings. Damn the draft!
The Rams reached Super Bowl LVI, building on the fly in 2021, preparing to compete against a team built conventionally with winning drafts.
The deal for Matthew Stafford merely triggered the Rams’ drive to the Super Bowl.
On the way, during the season, the Rams added Von Miller via trade with the Broncos to pair with Donald on the defensive line. And to terrify opponents. And for Stafford, they signed Odell Beckham Jr., for a receiving corps already electrified by the receiving skills of the awesome Kupp.
And for the playoffs, the Rams brought Eric Weddle out of retirement to play safety. Two defensive backs were injured and out. Weddle had been a multi-year Pro Bowl selection with the Chargers and Ravens. He retired after his one 2019 season with the Rams. Weddle had spent retirement coaching 12-year-old Pop Warner Football kids, college scouting, driving his kids around San Diego town and play gym-rat hoops.
He had been the spirit leader for three NFL franchises. He resumed that role for the Rams in January when he went back to work in the playoffs.
My theory is that the Rams did not reach the Super Bowl because Matthew Stafford is their quarterback.
They reached the Super Bowl because the Rams built a team to surround and aid Stafford.
The Rams used a revolutionary method to reach Super Bowl LVI — quaintly, the NFL has decreed, as the visiting team in their own SoFi Stadium.
But they were a copycat ballclub themselves.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers just one year ago won Super Bowl LV with some rather well-known personalities from around the league. Athletes such as Rob Grabowski and Antonio Brown, who did catch touchdown passes from a quarterback who’d been a low-round draft choice himself. That Tom Brady guy.
In the NFL, if that new defensive system works, a bunch of other teams will copy it. And if a new method of fortifying gathering winning personnel pushes a team long in the doldrums to reach a Super Bowl, copy it.
Jerry Green is a retired Detroit News sportswriter. He has covered every Super Bowl.