Rams beat Vikings, advance to Divisional Round
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
In a Wild Card Round characterized by one-sided victories, the Rams arguably saved the most impressive for last. They dominated from wire-to-wire in their 27-9 win over the Vikings, scoring on their first drive and taking a 24-3 lead into the locker room at halftime. Now, the Eagles await in the Divisional Round. The Vikings, meanwhile, saw their unlikely 14-win season end with a thud. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen recap the final game of Wild Card Weekend on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Host: Derrik Klassen
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Michael Beller
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Robert May's little bonus edition of the Athletic Football Show for you guys. |
| 0:09.7 | Me and Derek Classen reacted to the Rams Vikings Wildcard game, a doozy of a game. |
| 0:15.0 | One heck of a performance from the Los Angeles Rams, Matthew Stafford, Sean McVeigh in that offense, |
| 0:19.9 | and a great night from that young ascending Los Angeles Rams, Matthew Stafford, Sean McVeyn, that offense, and a great night from that |
| 0:22.0 | young ascending Los Angeles Rams defense. The other side of the coin for the Vikings, a tough |
| 0:27.9 | night for Sam Darnold and a tough two-week stretch from Sam Darnold. And I think some hard questions |
| 0:32.1 | for the Vikings after what has been a pretty darn good year. So we dug into all of that with me and Derek. |
| 0:38.6 | Let's get to it right now. |
| 0:45.4 | Well, Derek, the last game of Wild Card Weekend, I'll say it was a rich text. |
| 0:51.6 | There is a lot for us to dig into after that one, even though it was a |
| 0:55.1 | total blowout. The Rams destroy the Minnesota Vikings in a game that happens in Arizona. Credit to |
| 1:01.3 | the Rams for the composure they showed in this game, despite everything that has happened to them |
| 1:05.9 | this week. This thing didn't feel close from the start. It felt like the Rams had the Vikings number throughout this entire day, which felt like an extension in some ways of what they did to them early in the season. |
| 1:17.1 | We saw the best version of this Rams team twice against the Vikings over the course of this year. |
| 1:22.8 | And they put together arguably the most impressive performance of Wild Card weekend. |
| 1:27.5 | I would say like relative to expectation, certainly. Exactly. They put together arguably the most impressive performance of Wild Card Weekend. |
| 1:31.1 | I would say like relative to expectation, certainly. Exactly. Relative to opponent. |
| 1:33.0 | Yes. Opponent, like how they were like favored and stuff, all of the circumstances like you said coming into this game, regardless of whether they were favored or not. |
| 1:40.5 | It was an incredibly impressive performance on both sides of the ball. I think that's |
| 1:45.2 | kind of what shocked me because even the first time around, the defense got got a little bit, and it |
| 1:50.1 | was mostly the offense that kind of just carried them through. Certainly not the case today |
... |
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