INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Just after Matthew Stafford placed the ball in Kyren Williams’ arms on fourth-and-1 and the running back fell short as the two lines converged, San Francisco 49ers players ran on the field to celebrate an overtime victory over the Los Angeles Rams.
The mood in the home locker room at SoFi Stadium was not one of stunned silence. It was anger, fury and a whole lot of regret.
“(Bleeping, bleeping) team,” Rams wide receiver Davante Adams said on the way to his locker.
Players tried to talk through what just happened — how they came back from down 13 points in the second half to an NFC West rival, how they threw for nearly 400 yards to give themselves a chance to win, only to fail on fourth down.
“Guys are pissed off,” Stafford said of the mood, “because they care.”
Soon, their heads turned when they heard a scream. It was Jared Verse, the reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year, caught in a stretch between the tunnel and the locker room and in a metamorphosis from competitive warrior to a man who had to answer for why his team came up short.
Then there was coach Sean McVay.
“The play selection was very poor,” McVay said. “I’m sick right now because I put our players in a (expletive) spot and I’ve got to live with that.”
It was a different tone than McVay and Rams players displayed after losing two weeks ago to the Philadelphia Eagles, when they felt some validation in the 26-7 lead they built on the road against the reigning Super Bowl champions. Though they lamented the mistakes that led to a 33-26 loss, they embraced the lessons the first defeat of the season could offer.
Thursday, against a banged-up 49ers team missing three Pro Bowlers, was different. This was anger.
It had McVay rushing off the podium, into the locker room and over to three wide receivers huddled together. Tutu Atwell had won the game last week on an 88-yard touchdown and had just reeled in a 38-yard pass to set the Rams up with this chance in overtime, but he was not in on the final snap since it was a running play. Two other receivers, Puka Nacua and Jordan Whittington, were in as lead blockers.
The four watched clips from the game on a cellphone in a locker stall.
“That’s my fault there,” McVay said as he walked away.
McVay often blames himself when a play ends in disaster. He did it last week on Williams’ fumble, too.
“I’m not going to comment on whether or not I was a fan of it,” Adams said of the call. “If it works, then I’m a fan of it. If not, then I’m not, obviously.”
On one hand, football has an adage that, if you put a game on the backs of your offensive line to gain a single yard, simplify the variables. Shorten the distance. And if you can’t gain a single yard in the trenches, you don’t deserve to win.
But this Rams team is built differently than many that operate that way. It’s built for a passing league. There are costs in a game of inches.
Los Angeles got to the fourth-and-1 by throwing 47 times and running just 16. Stafford was looking like a clutch hero again, as he did last week against the Indianapolis Colts when he guided his 50th career game-winning drive. He was threatening to do it on Thursday with his Rams-career-high 389 yards and three touchdowns.
The overtime drive included one of the best throws he’s ever made. He felt pressure from the inside, spun a full 360 degrees to his left, reset between the hashes and launched the ball 48 yards in the air to a spot along the right sideline, where Atwell caught it in stride and stepped out of bounds for a 38-yard gain.
The Rams put the game in Stafford’s hands — until they didn’t.
That’s where the sting will likely lie for McVay. He went with a football adage ingrained in the grandson of a longtime 49ers executive instead of the bet he and the franchise placed when they acquired Stafford at the cost of Jared Goff and two first-round picks. The bet that won them a Super Bowl.
This was the third straight week the Rams went for a fourth-and-1 and got stuffed. All three were running plays. The first, in Philadelphia, was a Williams run behind backup right guard Beaux Limmer that Eagles first-round picks Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter blew up immediately. The second, against Indianapolis, was a sneak where the Rams left the NFL’s reigning tackles leader, Zaire Franklin, unblocked to pull down Stafford, who notoriously struggles with the sneak.
On Thursday, McVay had Williams run slightly off-tackle, where he had blockers against a defense in a two-safety look. But those blockers included backup right tackle Warren McClendon Jr., No. 2 tight end Davis Allen and wide receivers Whittington and Nacua. Whittington made a quick motion behind the other three, and then Nacua, Allen and McClendon got beat to their inside as 49ers cornerback Deommodore Lenoir came unblocked through the space Whittington vacated to pull Williams down.
The @49ers defense stood tall in the biggest moment 💪 pic.twitter.com/bDtfMXmuLR
— NFL (@NFL) October 3, 2025
“Sometimes if they line up and they’re a little looser, you may have a chance to have some sort of play-action pass on that play,” said 49ers All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner, who helped Lenoir on the tackle after swooping around Allen’s block. “But you could tell on that play by the way they came out that they were going to run.”
An offense can believe in making it obvious it’s running and still pick up a single yard when it has to. But that ideology usually comes with heavy personnel, like two tight ends or an extra tackle. Or with a quarterback sneak, like the Eagles have perfected amid a 20-1 stretch, a weapon the Rams know they don’t have with Stafford.
“I want the ball every time. That’s the kind of competitive player that I am,” Williams said. “I just have to keep the legs driving, run behind those people and get that 1 yard that we need.”
So was the problem the execution? Or the bet on the talents of the players blocking it?
“That’s a bread-and-butter short-yardage call for us,” Stafford said. “I didn’t have any problem with it. I trust in our guys to go out there and make a play.”
Said Nacua: “In short yardage, we trust our guys and with the physicality that we’ve been trying to adopt as our identity. I just barely saw the clip on social media, but I know I owe one to Kyren. It’s something I pride myself on.”
The Seattle Seahawks famously lost Super Bowl XLIX to the New England Patriots through the inverse of this play, by throwing at the goal line with a chance to win. But the pain of Malcolm Butler’s interception of Russell Wilson wasn’t just in the idea of throwing at the goal line: The Seahawks went against the strength of their offense by not running Marshawn Lynch.
On Thursday, the Rams went away from the strengths they are built on — Stafford, the game’s active leader in game-winning drives; Nacua, the NFL’s leading receiver; Adams, a three-time first-team All-Pro; and McVay, a Super Bowl-winning coach revered for his pass-game designs — to run behind backups and wide receivers.
And it was defensible: Williams has a hard-running style and was averaging 5.0 yards per carry. And McVay had just called a pass on third-and-1 in the fourth quarter, only for Stafford and Adams to miscommunicate on an option route. Perhaps that play weighed on McVay’s mind. But so, too, could have Williams’ fumble at the goal line with a chance to win at the end of regulation.
McVay had foundational passing plays to run. But he also knew the source of the most bankable plays, Nacua, was likely to see a double-team. And of the 14 previous runs he called in this game, every one gained at least a yard. But never was a run more obvious than this fourth-and-1.
Whether it was the play call or the execution, the chicken or the egg, a three-point overtime loss to a division rival is still a three-point overtime loss to a division rival. The pain is real, and it manifests in screams and expletives.
But it’s also just Week 5.
The Rams have details to clean up, but have a quarterback playing as well as any and stars at wide receiver and in the pass rush. They will have five more NFC West games, including a revenge match with these 49ers Week 10 in San Francisco.
They’re 3-2 with inches separating them from 5-0. Those inches are an inspiring, painful, motivating and heartbreaking pair of chapters in a book that is barely a quarter written.
Whether they become wounds or scars is the story the Rams will write the rest of this season.
(Photo: Harry How / Getty Images)
