The world will be tuning in on Sunday to see which two teams make it to the Super Bowl, with the Chiefs and Bills battling it out on the AFC side and the Eagles and Commanders renewing their rivalry in the NFC bracket.
Rams general manager Les Snead probably won’t be watching when the two NFC East teams square off at 3 p.m. ET, though. He doesn’t have other plans, he just knows how painful it’ll be watching anyone but the Rams in that game.
It was the Eagles, of course, who beat the Rams in the divisional round last Sunday to advance to the NFC title game, a heartbreaking loss for L.A. that came down to the final minutes. The Rams had a chance to win, getting all the way to the Eagles’ 13-yard line, but they couldn’t punch it in for the game-winning touchdown.
The pain of that loss still stings for Snead, who probably won’t watch the Eagles-Commanders game because of it.
“We’re going to decompress,” he told reporters Friday. “We’re going to somehow try to get through this weekend because it’ll be painful watching – at least in the NFC – two other teams vie for that conference championship instead of us. Even though they earned it, I probably won’t watch it.”
Snead is incredibly passionate about the Rams and even after 13 years of being the general manager, losses like that one still hurt. As painful as it was, he feels it’s a good thing that losses still hurt, reminding him how much he loves his job.
“I turned 54 on the Sunday that the Eagles beat us,” he said. “There are many times at age 54 where I can say I take losses way too hard. The neat thing is I’m only going to say that as I’ve gotten to 54, I now have this outline in my phone on notes on what I need to get to pretty quickly to get over that loss. It’s neat that it still hurts. I think if a loss didn’t hurt, I probably wouldn’t do it. I’d start thinking, ‘Wait a minute, am I just doing this to do it?'”
Now that he’s deep into his career as a GM, he’s learning how to channel the pain of defeat into becoming an even better leader in the Rams’ building.
“I do know that the neat thing about being somewhat finally getting mature is you can be intentional about how that energy is definitely net negative,” he said. “How do I get back to a more reasonable and rational perspective and then try to provide that within the building as a leader?”
The Rams desperately wish they were playing against the Commanders instead of the Eagles, especially considering it would’ve been a home game for the people in Los Angeles. But in what was a special season, they came up just short of their goal.
