Rams head coach Sean McVay said on Wednesday that he sees this season as a “professional failure” and it’s hard to argue with that assessment when you see the team’s 5-11 record going into their season finale, but it doesn’t mean that the team’s players have stopped thinking about ending the season on a high note.
That finale will take place in Seattle and it will be Rams linebacker Bobby Wagner’s first time playing there since being released by the Seahawks in the offseason. Wagner said he’ll be feeling “a lot of emotions” about being back in a place he knows well and that playing a Seahawks team that remains in the playoff hunt will be at the center of some of them.
“It’s going into a stadium I’ve been thousands of times, played hundreds of times,” Wagner said, via ESPN.com. “And to be in a position to spoil their playoff hopes is always a good position, something worth playing for. And it will be fun to go back there, be back in front of those fans that I spent so much time [around]. And it should be a fun game.”
If Wagner can help the Rams pull off the win, he’ll be more popular in Detroit than in Seattle even though a Rams win could lower the 2023 first-round pick that the Lions get as part of the Matthew Stafford trade. A Seahawks loss would mean the Lions are in the playoffs with a win over the Packers in the final game of Week 18 and that would be a welcome development regardless of draft implications.