Los Angeles Rams

• 1. Introduction

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  The Los Angeles Rams are the only franchise in NFL history to win championships representing three different cities: Cleveland in 1945, St. Louis in 1999, and Los Angeles in 1951 and 2021. That distinction alone hints at a restless, complicated history. A team founded in Cleveland on the 11th of April 1936, by an Ohio attorney and a former Ohio State player-coach would spend the next nine decades bouncing across the country, winning a championship in Ohio before the ink on their name had dried, integrating professional football under the shadow of a stadium lease, building dynasties in Southern California and then watching them dissolve, fleeing to the Midwest, and eventually finding its way back to a $5 billion stadium in Inglewood. How does a franchise keep reinventing itself without losing the thread? And what does it say about American professional sports that a team's identity can stretch across cities, decades, and eras, yet still feel like one continuous story? Those questions run through everything that follows.

• 2. Cleveland Origins

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  Homer Marshman and Damon Wetzel founded the Cleveland Rams on the 11th of April 1936. Wetzel, who had played briefly for the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Pirates, chose the name "Rams" in tribute to his favorite college team, the Fordham Rams. The club entered the newly formed American Football League and finished their debut season second in the league with a 5-2-2 record, trailing only the Boston Shamrocks. They joined the National Football League on the 12th of February 1937, assigned to the Western Division. The franchise was, as the source puts it, the fourth in a string of short-lived Cleveland football clubs, following the Tigers, Bulldogs, and Indians. For the first several seasons the team was defined by losing records and frequent stadium moves, though the 1939 season brought a bright spot: rookie halfback Parker Hall won the league's Most Valuable Player award. In June 1941, businessman Dan Reeves and Fred Levy Jr. bought the Rams. Reeves was an heir to a grocery-chain business that had been purchased by Safeway. Levy's family owned a department store chain in Kentucky, and he also owned the Riverside International Raceway. Levy owned his share of the team alongside Bob Hope until Reeves bought out all his partners in 1962. One critical wartime decision defined the middle years of this era: the franchise suspended operations entirely and sat out the 1943 season because of player shortages caused by World War II. They returned in 1944, and the stage was set for the most consequential season in their Cleveland history.

• 3. The 1945 Championship

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  Adam Walsh took over as head coach in 1945, the final season the Rams would spend in Ohio. Quarterback Bob Waterfield, a UCLA rookie, passed, ran, and place-kicked well enough to win the Joe F. Carr Trophy as the league's Most Valuable Player. The team went 9-1. Their first NFL Championship came on December 16 in a home game, a 15-14 victory over the Washington Redskins. The margin of victory was provided by a safety that has since passed into the rule books. Redskins quarterback Sammy Baugh threw a pass that struck the goal post and bounced backward through his team's own end zone. Under the rules of the time, that counted as a safety for Cleveland. The following season, the NFL changed the rule: what Baugh did would thereafter result only in an incomplete pass, never in a score. That single play, decided by a rule that no longer exists, gave Cleveland its only NFL championship. The Rams would never again play a home game in Ohio. Their owner had already been angling to move west.

• 4. Integration and Los Angeles

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  On the 12th of January 1946, Dan Reeves requested permission from the other NFL owners to move the Cleveland Rams to Los Angeles and the then-103,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The owners initially denied him. Reeves threatened to leave professional football altogether if the transfer was not permitted. A settlement was reached, and the Rams relocated. That agreement carried a condition that would reshape the sport. From 1933, when Joe Lillard left the Chicago Cardinals, through 1946, there were no Black players in professional American football. When the Rams negotiated a lease on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, they were told that integrating the team with at least one African-American player was a precondition of the deal. The Rams agreed. On the 21st of March 1946, the team signed Kenny Washington. The signing, according to the source, caused "all hell to break loose" among NFL franchise owners. On the 7th of May 1946, the Rams added a second Black player, Woody Strode, giving the team two Black players going into that inaugural Los Angeles season. The Rams also arrived in a market that already had competition: the upstart All-America Football Conference placed the Los Angeles Dons in the same Coliseum. Reeves was gambling that Los Angeles was ready for professional football, and his first evidence came quickly. The team's first preseason game against the Washington Redskins drew 95,000 fans. At the end of that first Los Angeles season, Walsh resigned as head coach, with the team finishing second in the division.

• 5. The Golden Era Offense

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  Wide receiver Elroy Hirsch, along with quarterbacks Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin, defined what Rams football looked like during the franchise's heyday in Southern California from 1949 to 1955. Hirsch and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Fears helped create a style of play built on big plays and open-field receiving. During the 1951 championship season, Hirsch caught passes for 1,495 yards and 17 touchdowns. The offense was so compelling that the 1950 Los Angeles Rams became the first professional football team to have all their games televised. On the strength of that wide-open attack, the team won the NFL Championship in 1951 and reached the title game three other times in that stretch. The popularity of the Rams during this period was extraordinary even as the Los Angeles sports landscape grew crowded. The Los Angeles Dodgers moved from Brooklyn in 1958. The Los Angeles Chargers of the AFL arrived in 1960. The Los Angeles Lakers relocated from Minneapolis that same year. Gene Autry received the Los Angeles Angels in 1961. Despite this multiplication of competition, the Rams continued to draw massive crowds. In 1958, their average attendance was 83,681; in 1959, it was 74,069. Those figures were tens of thousands above the league average of the era. When the AFL's new Chargers franchise considered competing directly with the Rams, the Los Angeles Times quoted the Chargers' owner at the time saying that taking on the Rams in Los Angeles was "like beating his head against the wall." The Chargers moved to San Diego instead. In 1957, the Rams set an all-time NFL attendance record that stood until 2006.

• 6. The Fearsome Foursome and Knox Years

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  Rosey Grier, Merlin Olsen, Deacon Jones, and Lamar Lundy formed the defensive line known as the "Fearsome Foursome" in the 1960s. That unit restored the franchise's on-field reputation under head coach George Allen, who led the team from 1966 to 1970. Allen introduced a number of coaching innovations, including hiring a young Dick Vermeil as one of the first special teams coaches in the NFL. Under Allen, the Rams reached the conference championship in 1967 before losing to Green Bay 28-7. That 1967 team became the first NFL squad to surpass one million spectators in a single season, a feat the Rams repeated in 1968. Allen never won a playoff game with the Rams, losing again in 1969 to Minnesota 23-20. He departed after the 1970 season to coach the Washington Redskins. Quarterback Roman Gabriel played 11 seasons with the Rams from 1962 to 1972 and won the NFL's MVP award in 1969 after throwing for 2,549 yards and 24 touchdowns. Chuck Knox took over as head coach and built teams defined by elite defense rather than flashy offense, winning seven consecutive NFC West titles from 1973 through 1979. The defining player of that stretch was defensive end Jack Youngblood, described by Merlin Olsen as the "Perfect Defensive End." Youngblood's toughness became legend when he played on a broken leg through the Rams' run to the Super Bowl following the 1979 season. In the 1977 offseason, the Rams acquired quarterback Joe Namath from the Jets. Bad knees made him nearly immobile, and after a Monday night loss in Chicago, he never played again. In 1972, Chicago industrialist Robert Irsay purchased the Rams for $19 million and then traded the franchise to Carroll Rosenbloom in exchange for the Baltimore Colts and cash.

• 7. Super Bowl XIV and the Move to Anaheim

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  The 1979 team that reached the Super Bowl was, by some measures, the Rams' weakest divisional winner of the decade, finishing the regular season 9-7. Third-year quarterback Vince Ferragamo led them past the heavily favored Dallas Cowboys 21-19 in the divisional round and then shut out the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 9-0 in the NFC Championship. Their Super Bowl opponent was the defending champion Pittsburgh Steelers. The game was played in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl, essentially a home game for the Rams. Some oddsmakers made Los Angeles a 10-point underdog, but the Rams led at halftime 13-10 and still held a 19-17 edge after three quarters. Pittsburgh scored two touchdowns in the final quarter, winning their fourth Super Bowl 31-19. Before the 1979 season, owner Carroll Rosenbloom died in a drowning accident. His widow, Georgia Frontiere, inherited 70 percent ownership of the team, fired her stepson Steve Rosenbloom, and assumed total control. In 1980, as had been planned before Rosenbloom's death, the Rams left the Coliseum for Anaheim Stadium in Orange County. Two forces drove that decision: the NFL's blackout rule, which prevented games from being shown locally unless they sold out within 72 hours, made the Coliseum's 92,604-seat capacity impossible to fill reliably; and a broad population shift toward the southern and western states was filling new suburbs in Orange County. Anaheim Stadium had originally been built in 1966 for baseball. Reconfigured for football, it held 69,008. With a smaller venue, sellouts came easily. Eric Dickerson arrived in 1983 from Southern Methodist University, won Rookie of the Year, and in 1984 rushed for 2,105 yards, setting an NFL record. He remained the franchise's career rushing leader until 2010, when Steven Jackson surpassed his 7,245 yards.

• 8. St. Louis and the Greatest Show on Turf

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  After declining seasons through the early 1990s, Georgia Frontiere moved the franchise to St. Louis after the 1994 NFL season. The vote among owners to block her had initially gone 21-3-6 against the move, but after Frontiere threatened a lawsuit, the league relented. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue stated plainly that "the desire to have peace and not be at war was a big factor" in reversing course. The Rams struggled in their first two St. Louis seasons under coach Rich Brooks before Dick Vermeil, who had been brought in by George Allen years earlier as a special teams pioneer, returned as head coach in 1997. The 1999 season turned on an injury. Starting quarterback Trent Green tore up his leg in preseason play, and the job fell to backup Kurt Warner. Warner had gone undrafted from college and had previously played for the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League and the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe. Vermeil told reporters the team would "rally around Kurt Warner, and play good football." Warner synced with Marshall Faulk and Isaac Bruce to produce one of the most prolific offenses in NFL history, scoring 526 points for the season. Warner threw 41 touchdown passes. The Rams beat the Tennessee Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV, and Warner was named the game's Most Valuable Player. Vermeil retired after the win, and offensive coordinator Mike Martz took over. Martz led the Rams to Super Bowl XXXVI, where the team lost to the New England Patriots 20-17. Over three seasons from 1999 to 2001, Martz's Rams set an NFL record for points scored. That run became known as "The Greatest Show on Turf." Georgia Frontiere died on the 18th of January 2008, after a 28-year ownership. Stan Kroenke eventually bought the franchise, and on the 12th of January 2016, NFL owners voted 30-2 to allow the Rams to return to Los Angeles.

  Sean McVay became the Rams' head coach on the 12th of January 2017, at age 30, making him the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, surpassing Lane Kiffin who was 31 when hired by the Oakland Raiders in 2007. McVay rebuilt the team quickly. After scoring a league-worst 224 points in 2016, the Rams led the NFL in points scored with 478 in McVay's first season. In the 2018 offseason, defensive tackle Aaron Donald signed a six-year, $135 million contract, making him the highest-paid defensive player in NFL history at the time. The Rams went 13-3 that season, the most wins ever for any NFL team in Los Angeles. They appeared in Super Bowl LIII but lost to the New England Patriots 13-3 in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history. The $5 billion-plus SoFi Stadium opened for the 2020 season. The pandemic kept fans out of the stadium's 70,000 seats for its first year. Before the 2021 season, the Rams traded Jared Goff to the Detroit Lions for quarterback Matthew Stafford, giving up a 2021 third-round pick and two first-round picks in 2022 and 2023. Stafford threw for 321 yards and three touchdowns in his Los Angeles debut against the Chicago Bears. Midseason additions included linebacker Von Miller from the Denver Broncos and wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. on a one-year deal. Cooper Kupp set a new Rams single-season receptions record during that campaign, surpassing the mark held by Isaac Bruce. The Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 to win Super Bowl LVI, becoming the second NFL team to win a Super Bowl in its home stadium. The club became the only franchise in league history to win NFL championships representing three different cities.