LOS ANGELES — When the NFL decided in the offseason to more strictly enforce helmet-to-helmet hits and roughing the passer penalties, league officials made a point of saying it was to enhance player safety.
“Our focus is taking the head out of the game, to make sure we’re using the helmet as protection and not as a weapon,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in March after the rules changes were adopted.
What Goodell did not mention were the unintended consequence of those changes, which were on full display Monday night in Los Angeles in a record-setting football slugfest between the Rams and Kansas City Chiefs: an explosion of scoring that has rewarded fast, pass-heavy offenses and shredded even the strongest defenses.
Monday night’s game was a perfect distillation of the new normal in the NFL. Two of the league’s most prolific offenses put on an entertaining show that left the Chiefs (9-2) on the short end of a 54-51 showdown with the Rams (10-1). The teams scored a combined 105 points as two of the league’s brightest star quarterbacks — Jared Goff of the Rams and Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs — swapped big play after big play, combining for more than 1,000 yards of offense.
Of course, this is the NFL, so there were also a multitude of questionable penalties, messy and game-defining turnovers and, for good measure, two missed extra points.
Despite all that, the game was the third highest-scoring game ever and the first time both teams each scored at least 50 points.
The game was, in the parlance of hyperventilating announcers, an “instant classic,” only this time, the phrase was not hyperbole. Dan Marino, Kurt Warner and Brett Favre taught us that scoring sells. But the way points are being scored this year is more akin to the wide-open college game. The teams scored with such ease that they blew through a record pregame over/under of 64 points with more than two minutes left in the third quarter.
“You’d like to win by more than 3 and score 50, but that’s the way it happened today,” Goff said afterward.
The blizzard of points is not exactly what the NFL envisioned in the offseason, but who are they to complain? If you are an owner, a league sponsor or a network executive, the points bonanza has been magic for television ratings, which declined the past two years.
This has given the league a much-needed boost after several years of off-field controversies, including players committing domestic violence, protests during the national anthem and deflated footballs.
It would be easy to view the Rams-Chiefs showdown as a unicorn game, a once-in-a-generation aberration. But gunslinging offenses are a trend. The Chiefs are the first team since 1966 to lose two games despite scoring 40 or more points. Right after losing to the New England Patriots, 43-40, in Week 6, they scored 45 points against the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Rams’ only loss of the season came two weeks ago in New Orleans to the Saints, 45-35. Two decades ago, the St. Louis Rams were the Greatest Show on Turf. Now several teams are vying for that title. Monday’s game was billed as a potential preview of the Super Bowl. Even if these two teams aren’t playing for the title in February, whoever does may put up just as many points.
Monday’s game was more than just a scoring bonanza; it was an unofficial proxy on the NFL’s return to Los Angeles after more than two decades. This is the Rams’ third season back in California. They received a lukewarm reception the first year and won over some skeptics last year by winning 11 games.
Now 10-1, the Rams have worked their way back into relevance in part because Monday’s game helped fans in and around Los Angeles forget, even for a few hours, the events of the past week and a half. On Nov. 8, a gunman killed a dozen people in Thousand Oaks, near the Rams’ training facility and offices. Then deadly wildfires raged nearby, forcing some players, coaches and staff out of their homes.
The Rams managed to beat the Seattle Seahawks at home on Nov. 11, then flew to Colorado Springs to train at altitude in preparation for Monday’s game, which was scheduled to be played in Mexico City. A day after arriving in Colorado, the Rams learned that the league was moving the game to Los Angeles because of problems with the field at Azteca Stadium. The Rams stayed in Colorado until Saturday anyway.
The Rams scrambled to host the Chiefs. They gave away about 4,000 tickets to emergency workers, firefighters and the families of victims of the shooting in Thousand Oaks, and honored the 12 victims of the shooting before the game. Los Angeles sports fans are sometimes mocked for their casual devotion to their teams. But Monday, on relatively short notice, more than 77,000 tickets were distributed. They were richly rewarded with a game for the ages at a time when the city — and the league — needed it most.
“Games like this rarely live up to the hype,” said Kevin Demoff, the Rams’ chief operating officer. “This is kind of a Hollywood script.”
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