ESPN Rams vs. 49ers, for a ticket to the Super Bowl: Insults, ticket blocking and rivalry that is reborn Star + arrives in Latin America!

Jan 29, 2022

Rams and 49ers will meet for the NFC title for the second time in history; San Francisco was the 30-3 winner in the only precedent

The Los Angeles Rams could have made sure their opponent in Sunday's NFC Championship Game was anyone but the San Francisco 49ers, but they lost to their northern rivals 31-10 on Nov. 15 and 27-24 in the final. in season on January 9. Now, on the NFC's biggest stage, they must take on a 49ers team that snuck into the playoffs with that Week 18 win -- a 49ers team the Rams have lost to six straight times.

Even worse for Los Angeles, history suggests that beating the same team three times in a season isn't as hard as it sounds. The same ones that have faced each other three times on 22 occasions, and the winner of the first two confrontations took the third commitment 14 times.

So the 49ers and Rams will meet for the NFC title for the second time in postseason history. The 49ers beat the Rams 30-3 in the 1989 NFC Championship Game.

"I don't think there are a lot of secrets," Niners coach Kyle Shanahan said. "There are not many things that we can surprise them with and the same with us, which I think is the most fun way. It will be two really good teams and a really good game of football where we can't really fool each other. You have to go out there and win."

Four of the 49ers' wins during the current six-game stretch have come as the underdog, a position San Francisco holds again heading into Sunday.

Before their Week 18 game, Niners tight end George Kittle called the game "kind of a body bag game" as he tried to explain how the winning team would have to exert their will over the opponent. Apparently, his words provoked the Rams.

After LA led 17-0 in the first half, Kittle said that five Rams players started "bothering" him, to which he responded that there was "a lot of time on that clock."

He was correct. There was enough time for the Niners to get together and get their ticket to the postseason, to which Kittle said, "I wish I could see them again." Rams pass-rusher Von Miller chuckled when told of Kittle's comments this week.

"That's the Joker," Miller said. "That's how he does it. We've got to do our part to make sure we get body bags in here too, I guess. They're a tough, physical team. That's how they do it. That's been working for them. We've got to do what that we can do and play our style of football and not really get caught up."

Another thing the Rams can't get caught up in? fans. In Week 18, the stadium was a sea of ​​red, so much so that quarterback Matthew Stafford called it a "tough environment." The Rams' offense had to go to a silent count due to crowd noise, with coach Sean McVay saying the Rams were "caught off guard" by the Niners fans in attendance.

San Francisco wide receiver Deebo Samuel noted after the game that the Rams "were making noise because there weren't that many Rams fans."

Former Niners quarterback Alex Smith, who was at that game, said he thought it was a 60/40 split in favor of San Francisco. For Smith, who grew up in California and has watched the heated rivalries between the Giants and Dodgers in Major League Baseball and the Warriors and Lakers in the NBA, he felt as if a true rivalry had been reborn.

"I think this has become one of the best rivalries in football," Smith said. "You take advantage of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry and it's the same fans. It became this Northern California vs. Southern California [thing]. They don't like each other. Even with the head coaches who are great friends and obviously have a lot of history, I think that adds to the whole story.

For Sunday's game, the Rams tried to restrict ticket sales to fans with credit cards registered in the surrounding Los Angeles area, though they denied it was related to what happened in the most recent game.

That came after Melissa Whitworth, the wife of Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworth, pleaded on Twitter for Rams fans not to sell their tickets to Niners fans and said she would buy them instead. McVay asked his fan base to "keep those tickets."

Those efforts, of course, couldn't explain what was already happening in the ticket market. According to Vivid Seats, this is the most requested game of the postseason with an average price of $824 and a starting price of $537. Vivid Seats has a fan forecast, a proprietary algorithm, that earlier this week projected the crowd to be 65/35 in favor of the 49ers. Be that as it may, the team is confident that its fans will return en masse on Sunday.

"When you can get your fans behind you like that ... it just changes the momentum of the game," quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo said. "It's not something you can really point to and you can't specifically see, but you can feel it, you can hear it. And our team responds well to that. So I hope the faithful are out there loud and proud."

Of course, while ticket distribution and previous matches are fun to discuss, none of that will matter much. The Niners may have a mental advantage because they've won six straight, or the Rams may be about to break through because they're too good to lose to the same team seven straight times. In the end, this game will come down to the usual stuff like turnovers, third downs, and tackles.

"That's why we're in this position," McVay said. "We're going to roll it out and see who plays better in that 3½-hour window and gives themselves a chance to advance."

ESPN NFL Nation's Brady Henderson contributed to this story.