For the majority, the Super Bowl was going to come down to two teams coming out of the NFC: the Los Angeles Rams or the Seattle Seahawks. Both teams, who happen to be division rivals, played exceptional football all season and earned every win they got.
Additionally, both the Rams and Seahawks were considered among the very best teams in the league this past season, so it was fitting that the NFC Championship game came down to the wire between the West Coast franchises.
While that particular game was fantastic to watch, their Week 16 matchup is the best of the three all season, and also the most controversial, due to one specific two-point conversion call that went the Seahawks' way. Now, over two months later, the Rams are still up in arms about it and are pushing for the league to do something about it.
Rams expected to submit a proposal to the NFL for a rule change, thanks to the Seattle Seahawks
The Rams were up 30-28 after a Seahawks touchdown brought them within two points, so Seattle decided to go for two. On a backwards Sam Darnold pass to Zach Charbonnet, Rams defender Jared Verse got his helmet in the way and made contact with the football mid-toss, causing it to deflect upward and eventually drop to the ground.
Charbonnet, who was Darnold's original target, would eventually, casually, make his way to the end zone, pick up the ball, and the play was blown dead, and the two-point conversion had failed. Or, so it appeared to be. After a few minutes of official review, the play was overturned, and the two-point conversion was awarded to the Seahawks. It became a 30-30 tied game at that moment.
The Rams would eventually go on to lose the game 38-37 in overtime thanks to Darnold's second-half heroics. The Rams would never beat the Seahawks again during the season after that, and the Seahawks are now the Super Bowl champions.
After that game, Rams head coach Sean McVay admitted he had never seen anything like it before — he was flabbergasted, to say the least, even to the point where the Rams' organization are, two months later, expected to propose that the NFL make a rule change regarding that specific play, or, more specifically, how a team can score on a two-point conversion play.
How successful the Rams will be in this endeavor, we'll find out, eventually. The only question is, the ball was thrown as a backward pass, so, according to the rules, there was nothing wrong with how the play, well, played out. Either they want to address a whistle issue, or the point of contact that caused the ball to move forward. They are sure to have more than one option to argue.
That said, it's not often that teams are successful when they go to the league with rule change proposals. Consider the "push tush", for instance, made successfully famous by Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles. The push, no pun intended, to erase the play from the legal playbook fell short last offseason, giving the Eagles one more season at least to capitalize on running the play.
It could still get booted from the league in the future, and all things considered, if the push tush or the play the Rams are concerned about are the two plays to get changed this summer, it's going to be the push tush, leaving the Rams sitting in their grief for entire offseason, until they get another crack at the Seahawks next season.