3 penalties on 3 straight plays in final minutes cost Cincy

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A sea of yellow flags flew onto the field in the final two minutes with the Super Bowl at stake.

After the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals were flagged only twice in the first 58 minutes, penalties on three consecutive plays helped determine a champion.

Matthew Stafford tossed a 1-yard touchdown pass to Cooper Kupp for the go-ahead score following three straight penalties on Cincinnati’s defense, and the Rams’ defense held on for a 23-20 victory Sunday.

“Crunch time, they got flag happy and it put us in a bad situation,” Bengals cornerback Mike Hilton said. “But we can’t blame it on them. We just have to find ways to win.”

The Bengals were the second-least penalized team in the league and had the fewest penalty yards.

But when it mattered most, the calls went against them.

“We pride ourselves on being a very disciplined team and that was a very, very undisciplined moment and it is frustrating,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said.

The barrage of flags started on third down from the 8 with 1:47 left when Stafford’s pass to Kupp was incomplete. However, a questionable holding call on Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson gave the Rams a first down at the 4.

“They got down to the red zone on third down and Logan made a hell of a play I thought on Cooper Kupp and the penalty flag comes throwing out,” Bengals cornerback Chidobe Awuzie said. “Obviously, I’m not a ref, I don’t know what happened on that play.”

On the next play, Stafford tossed a 4-yard TD pass to Kupp but the play was nullified by offsetting penalties. Rams right tackle Rob Havenstein held and Bengals safety Vonn Bell was called for unnecessary roughness for a hard hit on Kupp.

“Well, there’s some things that are out of our control. Just a couple judgment calls there,” Bengals defensive end Trey Hendrickson said.

Stafford threw incomplete to Kupp in the end zone on the next play, but a pass interference on Eli Apple put the ball at the 1.

“Both (defensive backs) on both sides were grabbing, a little pull here and there and the first three quarters they were fine with it,” Hilton said. “It’s part of the game. We can’t control if they are going to call it or not.”

After Stafford got stuffed on a sneak, he tossed a 1-yard TD pass to Kupp.

Joe Burrow had 1:25 to lead Cincinnati into field-goal range, but the Bengals failed on three attempts to get 1 yard from the Rams 49.

For most of the game, the officials let the teams play.

“They should have just let it play out how they were doing the whole game,” Bengals wide receiver Tyler Boyd said.

It appeared they even missed a penalty that would’ve negated Burrow’s 75-yard TD pass to Tee Higgins on the first play of the second half. Higgins beat Jalen Ramsey to give the Bengals a 17-13 lead, but he got away with grabbing the All-Pro cornerback’s facemask and spinning his head around before making the catch.

“Our rule is that if there is a grab and twist and turn, there’s enough for a foul. If there’s just a rake across the facemask, where there’s not a twist and turn even if there’s a grab, there is no foul,” referee Ronald Torbert told a pool reporter. “The officials did not see any contact that rose to the level of a foul for a 15-yard facemask.”

The turning point for Los Angeles came after falling behind 20-13. The Rams and their ferocious defensive line sacked Burrow four times over the next 11 plays.

Burrow went down seven times, six in the second half. Aaron Donald and Von Miller each had two sacks.

“They have a really good front,” Burrow said. “Aaron Donald, Von Miller, Leonard Floyd are three of the best payers in the league. We expected pressure and they did a good job.”

Rams overcome injuries to beat Bengals

Even the star-studded Los Angeles Rams have a limit to the number of injuries they can withstand, and they were all but out of playmakers in the second half of the Super Bowl.

But the Rams still had MVP Cooper Kupp, and they still had Matthew Stafford.

That was enough to win a championship.

Los Angeles’ victory was a remarkable final chapter in a story of perseverance through injury setbacks that would have crushed most teams — including the Rams, if not for one final scoring drive catalyzed by Kupp and Stafford.

“Those guys just did a great job,” coach Sean McVay said. “They took over the game. … So many contributions. It’s about these players.”

The Rams played the fourth quarter of their home Super Bowl with rookies Ben Skowronek and Brycen Hopkins logging significant playing time. That’s because Odell Beckham Jr. went down with a knee injury in the second quarter, leaving the Rams to finish their final game without four of their top six pass-catchers by yardage from the regular season.

In their place, the Rams sent out their two rarely used rookies along with tight end Kendall Blanton, a borderline third-stringer when the season began. Running back Darrell Henderson, who hadn’t played since Dec. 26 because of an injury, was used extensively as a pass-catching target in the Super Bowl partly because the Rams had no other bodies to do it.

The injuries freed up the Bengals to focus their defense on Kupp, who caught just two passes between his TD reception early in the second quarter and the Rams’ final drive, barely getting a look at the ball in the middle quarters.

Improbably, the Rams still made it work with the game on the line.

With the insistence of a video gamer who incessantly mashes the button for his most talented receiver, Stafford targeted Kupp repeatedly on the final drive, all the way to Kupp’s decisive 1-yard TD catch with 1:25 to play.

“It just comes down to this team and they way we prepared, they way we loved each other, trusted each other,” Kupp said.

The Rams won the Super Bowl with nobody other than Kupp catching more than four passes. For an offense built on star power and variety of attack, this scenario probably wasn’t ideal for McVay — but the Rams found a way.

The Rams lost Robert Woods, their productive veteran receiver, at midseason with a torn knee ligament. Right before that injury, disgruntled veteran DeSean Jackson asked to leave the team after just seven games — a disastrous decision that meant Jackson had to watch his hometown team win the Super Bowl without him.

Los Angeles then lost tight end Tyler Higbee to a knee injury in the NFC championship game, depriving Stafford of one of his most reliable targets.

And then in the second quarter of the Super Bowl, Beckham fell to the turf holding his left knee without a defender near him. He returned to the sideline in the second half, urgently cheering on his teammates — and then crying openly in the postgame celebration.

The players who replaced them in the Super Bowl were highly unlikely candidates.

Hopkins made one reception in the entire regular season, but he had four catches for 47 yards in the Super Bowl.

Skowronek, whose play on special teams has been much better than his work in the offense this season, was targeted five times by Stafford, but came up with just two catches.

The Rams’ lack of depth partly is an unfortunate side effect of loading the top of their roster with big names and huge paychecks. When injuries hit the Rams this season, the depth players that they could afford were not up to the same standard — and they struggled mightily at times with backup receivers, linebackers and defensive backs forced to play as starters.

Somehow they overcame it all, winning the franchise’s first Los Angeles championship with that severely depleted receiving group and a defense that included a 37-year-old safety who had been retired for two years before this postseason (Eric Weddle) backing a largely undistinguished group of linebackers that somehow survived Joe Burrow’s persistent targeting of receivers over the middle.

“We just stuck to it,” two-time Super Bowl champion Von Miller said. “It wasn’t a speech or nothing. We just stuck to it. We kept doing the same things we’ve been doing all season. We fought through adversity all season long. Just take it one play at a time. We believed in the rush.”

The Rams’ passing problems were compounded by their utter inability to run the ball — and McVay’s insistence on continuing to try. Los Angeles repeatedly ran first-down plays into the immobile line for setbacks and minor gains, but McVay continued to run it with Henderson, Cam Akers and Sony Michel.

Los Angeles had 23 rushing attempts for 43 yards — and it still won the Super Bowl.

“Not a lot of good situations I put us in,” McVay said. “But you put the ball in your best players’ hands when it matters the most, and that’s what we did with Matthew. And he delivered in a big way, and he’s a world champ.”