Perhaps the easiest way to explain the 2026 Rams is to look at what happened after their season ended. 

The Rams lost the NFC Championship game in Seattle with the football at the Seahawks’ 6-yard line, just 4 yards separating them from the potential game-winning touchdown and a Super Bowl berth. 

This offseason, the Rams responded to that heartbreak with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. 

General manager Les Snead traded for Trent McDuffie. He signed Jaylen Watson. Then came the earthquake: reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, acquired from the Browns after setting an NFL single-season record with 23 sacks.

Apparently that still wasn’t enough.

Aaron Donald came out of retirement.

All those additions sound amazing, but stop for a second and consider what they are joining. 

Matthew Stafford is coming off the best season in his 18-year career and is the reigning NFL MVP after throwing for a career-high 46 touchdown passes with only eight interceptions. He led the league with more than 4,700 passing yards. 

His top two receivers are elite. Puka Nacua caught an NFL-best 129 passes for 1,715 yards and 10 touchdowns. He finished second for the NFL Offensive Player of the Year award. His teammate on the outside, Davante Adams, led the league in touchdowns. Running back Kyren Williams rushed for more than 1,100 yards for the third straight season. 

The Rams had the NFL’s highest-scoring offense last season, and their defense finished seventh with 47 sacks before adding Garrett and Donald. The addition of McDuffie gives the defense the shutdown corner it was so desperately missing. 

Nonetheless, legitimate concerns are hiding beneath all that star power.

Stafford is 38 years old. Donald is 35 and hasn’t played football in 2 1/2 years. Garrett dealt with knee soreness throughout training camp. The offensive line lost longtime right tackle Rob Havenstein to retirement. The Rams face one of football’s toughest schedules and begin the season approximately 8,000 miles from Los Angeles against their rivals, the 49ers, in Melbourne, Australia. 

But let’s not manufacture suspense where there isn’t much.

This is the NFL’s best roster on paper. 

The Rams are not rebuilding, developing or hoping to sneak into January. They have shoved every available chip into the center of the table with the Super Bowl returning to SoFi Stadium on Feb. 14. 

Winning the NFC West is the minimum. 

Anything short of a deep playoff run will be considered a failure. 

Anything short of the Super Bowl will be a missed opportunity.

And if the Rams somehow win the whole thing in their own stadium again?

Then Sean McVay and Snead will have pulled off one of the most audacious championship constructions in NFL history. 

So, let’s grade each unit of this Rams team.

RAMS OFFENSE

This isn’t complicated. Keep Stafford upright. 

Do that and good luck stopping this Rams offense. 

Stafford enters his 18th NFL season riding high off his first MVP award. He has weapons all around him in Nacua, Adams, Williams and Blake Corum. 

The tight end room is the deepest in football. Colby Parkinson caught eight touchdowns last season. Terrance Ferguson offers fascinating upside and is primed for a breakout sophomore season. Veterans Tyler Higbee and Davis Allen provide McVay with even more options, and rookie Max Klare is another movable piece. 

The biggest question and the key to their success lives on the offensive line. 

Alaric Jackson, Steve Avila, Coleman Shelton and Kevin Dotson form a capable core, but Havenstein’s retirement leaves Warren McClendon with enormous responsibility at right tackle. Jackson’s availability with a potential suspension looming is another concern. 

The Rams allowed fewer sacks than any team last season. They cannot afford to have any regression. Because for all their depth everywhere else, Stafford is the one player they cannot replace.

Grade: A-

DEFENSE

Imagine being an offensive coordinator preparing for the Rams. 

First, decide how to block Garrett, who has 125.5 sacks since entering the NFL in 2017, just broke the league’s single-season record and was just voted as the top-ranked player on the NFL’s annual Top 100 list. 

Then account for Donald in the middle. Then remember Byron Young made the Pro Bowl with 12 sacks last season. Then figure out what to do with Kobie Turner and Braden Fiske.

Good luck with that. 

The irony of Donald’s return is that the man who terrorized the league for a decade and was just three years from becoming a first-ballot Hall of Famer doesn’t even need to play every snap. He doesn’t even need to play 70 snaps. He might not even need to play 50. 

He just needs a handful of moments in a game in which he can destroy a protection on third-and-long while Garrett attracts a double-team off the edge. Defensive coordinator Chris Shula truly has a plethora of weapons available to him and has several players capable of ruining an offense without blitzing. That’s something coordinators spend their entire careers dreaming of. 

If the Rams’ ninth-ranked defense last season had any flaws, it was in the secondary. So, they went out and added a star. 

McDuffie gives the Rams a true shutdown corner capable of traveling with elite receivers. Watson provides size and experience opposite him. Emmanuel Forbes remains a volatile-but-intriguing playmaker after recording 18 passes defensed and three interceptions last season. 

Kam Curl quietly produced 122 tackles, two interceptions and two sacks. Quentin Lake is the leader of the defense, and linebacker Nate Landman led the team in tackles with 132.

If they can stop the run, they’ll be a nightmare for opposing offenses.

Grade: A

SPECIAL TEAMS

This is the phase of the game that keeps McVay up at night. 

That sounds strange considering Harrison Mevis made 12 of 13 field-goal attempts after taking over midway through last season and converted all 39 of his extra points. He provided exactly what the Rams desperately needed: stability. 

Now he has to prove that his relatively small sample size wasn’t a mirage. 

The Rams learned the hard way last season how quickly bad special teams can sabotage everything. Mistakes in critical situations became the norm. It cost them games early in the season, which cost them home-field advantage in the postseason, which may have played a role in their loss to the Seahawks in the NFC Championship game. 

Do you know what unequivocally played a role in that loss?

Special teams. 

Punt returner Xavier Smith muffed a punt early in the third quarter that directly led to a Seahawks touchdown. 

The Rams fired their special teams coordinator last season and hired veteran Bubba Ventrone this year. He will need to get this special teams unit to have more consistency. The addition of long snapper Joe Cardona should help stabilize the operation. 

Special teams doesn’t have the kind of safety net that the offense and defense do. That’s why McVay said he might alter his philosophy this season when it comes to special teams. Expect starters to be featured prominently on special teams this year. 

For a franchise spending lavishly everywhere else, this remains the part of the roster most capable of producing an absolutely infuriating January ending.

Grade: B-

COACHING

There was a time when McVay was the NFL’s wunderkind.

Well, now he’s a man. He’s 40. 

Which is absurd considering this is already his 10th season as the head coach of the Rams. 

McVay has gone from offensive savant to one of the defining coaches of his generation, and the challenge facing him in 2026 is different from almost anything he has encountered before.

McVay no longer needs to prove himself or his system. He’s not looking to exceed expectations. 

This season the expectations are a Super Bowl or bust. Anything else would be considered a failure and slam shut the Rams’ championship window.

Stafford is 38. Donald is 35. Adams is 33. Garrett turns 31 soon. McVay’s job is not simply winning in September. It’s getting this roster to January with enough left in the tank to win four more. 

The rest of the coaching staff is a plethora of new faces. Shula returns as defensive coordinator, but Nate Scheelhaase replaces Mike LaFleur as offensive coordinator after drawing head-coaching interest in the offseason. McVay will continue calling plays but promoting Scheelhaase ensures continuity and keeps another creative voice in the meeting room. 

Ventrone replaces Chase Blackburn as special teams coordinator. Former Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury is McVay’s new assistant head coach. Former Rams players Brian Allen and Robert Woods have joined the staff as well. 

Together, these coaches have the difficult task of turning the NFL’s best collection of names into the best team on the field.

Grade: A