INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Stay clean. Avoid the critical mistakes.
That’s a mantra both the 13-7 Cincinnati Bengals and 15-5 Los Angeles Rams should have adopted as they head to this evening’s Super Bowl, with kickoff scheduled for 6:30 p.m. EDT. Quarterbacked by former Detroit Lion Matthew Stafford, the Rams have been installed as a 4-point favorite, playing on their own home field at SoFi Stadium.
Limit the turnovers and costly penalties. Don’t waste timeouts, particularly in the second half. Get physical rather than fancy. Being efficient can trump being spectacular.
All they need to do is look back to the last time the Los Angeles area hosted a Super Bowl nearly three decades ago. That game at the Rose Bowl became an almost laughable rout as the Buffalo Bills kept surrendering the ball to the Dallas Cowboys.
“Just going to go out there and impose our will and play physical and let the chips fall where they may,” Bengals cornerback Eli Apple said.
Echoed Rams All-Pro cornerback Jalen Ramsey: “Do our thing and do it the best we can. That’s winning football.”
Sure, the Super Bowl is America’s biggest sporting event; some would argue it is America’s biggest event of any kind. It’s splashy, it’s overhyped, with a weeklong publicity machine by the league, the teams, the host city, the network televising it.
In the end, it’s a football game. And most football games are won by the team that minimizes miscues.
That will be either the Rams or the Bengals.
