Football Outsiders Almanac 2018 Preview Q&A: Super Bowl or bust for Los Angeles Rams

We’re partnering with Football Outsiders again this year to promote the release of the Football Outsiders Almanac 2018. FO continues to raise the bar for quantitative analysis, and the 2018 almanac is proof positive. In our five-part preview, we’ll look at how they modeled the 2017 Los Angeles Rams and what they’re looking at for 2018 with FO’s Bryan Knowles (@BryKno).

Pt. I: An offense renewed

Pt. II: Defense rising

Pt. III: Gurley for MVP?

Pt. IV: Going deep

PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY THE LOS ANGELES RAMS WILL WIN THE SUPER BOWL IN LESS THAN 1,000 WORDS AND MORE THAN 4 THANK YOU

Ndamukong Suh. Marcus Peters. Aqib Talib. Brandin Cooks. The last team to add so much talent in free agency was the 1994 49ers, who rented a defense with Deion Sanders, Richard Dent, Rickey Jackson and Ken Norton Jr. That’s what it took for them to get over the hump and win Super Bowl XXIX after years of playing second-fiddle in the NFC. While it eventually ruined their salary cap situation, the Lombardi Trophy still looks pretty darn shiny all these years later. Add that much talent to an already very good team, and you probably have a recipe for (short-term) success.

Take what’s projected to be the best defense in football, add in Sean McVay’s offensive wizardry, and you have one of the top teams in the league. We have them with the fourth-highest odds of winning the Super Bowl, and the only reason they’re not higher is because the NFC is really tough while the AFC looks more like a cakewalk. They’re right up there with the cream of the NFC.