Despite making enough errors to torpedo their chances of winning, Sean McVay's Rams had one more opportunity to emerge victorious Thursday night at SoFi Stadium.
In that moment, McVay said afterward, their coach failed them.
"It's a bad call," McVay admitted quickly after the Rams' 26-23 overtime loss to the San Francisco 49ers. "It's a bad call by me."
The call in question came on fourth-and-1 from San Francisco's 11-yard line with less than four minutes to play in overtime. It was a situation in which McVay knew he wanted to go for the first down in an attempt to win the game outright instead of trying a game-tying field goal and giving the 49ers one more possession to earn the victory.
In the end, McVay's high-pressure decision -- a short-yardage handoff to Kyren Williams that was promptly stuffed at the line of scrimmage -- fell flat, turning it over on downs and giving the 49ers their fourth win in five weeks.
"Poor decision by me right there, but give the Niners credit," McVay said. "They made enough plays to be able to win the football game. We had plenty of chances throughout this game. We stayed in it, we fought, we battled, but there's a lot of things that we have to be able to clean up, and a lot of football left.
"I'm pretty sick right now. I'm sick of the spot that I put our group in to end the game. But hey, these are the tough beats that you've got to be able to learn from and move forward, and that's what we're going to do."
The sequence that preceded the game's final snap suggested McVay had a better play in mind. As soon as Williams' third-down reception concluded short of the line to gain, McVay was already confidently calling his fourth-and-1 play.
Sensing the 49ers might give up a crucial first down, coach Kyle Shanahan wisely called a timeout before the fourth-down play began. It was a snap decision that may have won San Francisco the game.
After the timeout, McVay seemed to waver, lining up the Rams with instructions to attempt to draw the 49ers offside. San Francisco didn't take the bait, forcing McVay to devise a new plan of attack.
In that moment, McVay was backed into a corner and made the decision to trust his running back with an uncharacteristically simple call. Having already moved beyond the point of no return, the coach knew he couldn't relent and line up for a field goal. Call it foolish or prideful if you must; in the end, McVay saw it as regrettable.
"No. No," McVay said when asked if he'd considered kicking the field goal. "In hindsight, I wish I would've. We came in here to try to win the football game. It didn't go down for us. That wasn't even a thought. The play selection was very poor. I'm sick right now because I put our players in a s----y spot. I've got to live with that."
A field goal certainly wasn't guaranteed, especially not for a Rams kicking unit that has struggled to block effectively and had already allowed an extra point to be blocked -- their fourth blocked kick surrendered in five games -- earlier in the game, keeping the score tied at 20-20.
Still, a try might have produced a better outcome than the bitter result McVay was still tasting in the moments after the game.
"My job is to put our players in successful situations and outcomes, and that wasn't it right there," McVay said.
Los Angeles' Thursday night performance was filled with errors. The Rams missed 17 tackles in the game, per Next Gen Stats, watched a promising drive stall after three dropped passes, and fumbled away a likely touchdown on San Francisco's 1-yard line late in the fourth quarter. Lesser teams would have folded long before overtime even became a possibility.
"For us to even be in it is a real credit to the resilience of the group," McVay said. "But that's not winning football."
McVay is right: On Thursday night, it was not winning football. In the five-period chess match between former fellow assistant coaches, McVay was outmaneuvered.
Fortunately, there's plenty left in the 2025 regular season -- and these two foes will meet again on Nov. 9 in Santa Clara.
