After weeks of thrilling action, the 2018-19 NFL season has delivered two outstanding candidates for Super Bowl glory in the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots, and although the Rams go into the game as slight favourites, it promises to be a tight battle.
Having missed out last year in an epic Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles, the Patriots lost two of their first three games of the 2018-19 season, and there was even talk of the legendary Tom Brady being at the end of his career. But they kept finding ways to win, beating a resurgent Chicago team at Soldier Field and edging out Kansas City in a classic 43-40 thriller at the Gillette Stadium.
But their most impressive performance came in the AFC Championship game, where they took on the Chiefs again, pulling out a remarkable overtime victory, in which Brady served a reminder to the young pretender Patrick Mahomes, that he wasn’t ready yet to surrender his crown. Brady had also put on an exhibition of quarterback play in the Divisional round, when the highly-rated Los Angeles Chargers were picked apart at Gillette Stadium.
Standing in the way of Tom Brady’s sixth Super Bowl ring, and a sixth Super Bowl triumph for the Patriots, are the Los Angeles Rams. Although they were rated as only sixth favourites to win the Super Bowl by the implied probabilities on the bigbetbookmakers.com site, the Rams dominated the NFC West Division, finishing with a 13-3 record. That included a run of eight straight victories to start the season, and a 35-23 win over their rivals the Los Angeles Chargers in Week Three.
The Rams had a tough route to the Super Bowl, facing the in-form Dallas Cowboys in the Divisional Round, and the 13-3 New Orleans Saints in the NFC Conference Final. But that proved no problem for the Rams. Against Dallas they outbattled one of the NFL’s leading defences and neutralised a dangerous offence that included Ezekiel Elliot and Amari Cooper.
Against the Saints, the Rams were on the back foot for most of the game and never led at any stage, despite edging their opponents in terms of yards gained. But with 15 seconds left on the clock, Greg Zuerlein slotted a 48-yard field goal to send the game into overtime, where Zuerlein was again the hero, scoring a 54-yard monster kick – the second longest in NFL play-off history, to send the Rams to the Super Bowl for the seventh time in the franchise’s history.
Elsewhere there were some disappointments in the season, most notably the collapse of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who had a 7-2-1 record but then lost four of their remaining six games to drop out of play-off contention and end a four-year play-off streak. The Jaguars were let down by a declining defence, while Green Bay couldn’t overcome a tough schedule and the Eagles were unable to repeat their 2018 heroics, losing to New Orleans Saints in the Divisional Round.
