One of the biggest plays of Super Bowl LVI came with 5 minutes remaining. The Rams trailed 20-16 when, on fourth-and-one from the Los Angeles 30, Sean McVay decided to go for it.
Not only did he decide to go for it, but he decided to call a play that the Rams hadn’t run smoothly in practice.
“It was definitely something that I think you in that moment, if you don’t get that, you turn the ball back over, back in Bengals territory, and that’s going to be a tough situation for us as a team to overcome,” Kupp told USA Today. “It’s a play that caused a lot of consternation as Sean would say, because there were a lot of moving parts going on. You’re on the silent snap count. The stadium is loud, trying to figure out how you’re going to time this whole thing up. We fumbled it like once or twice during the week, where we just weren’t getting the snap to hand off. We were having some issues with it. Going into it, Matthew (Stafford) and I talked. We came to Sean at the end of the week, and we’re like, ‘Hey, I know you want to call this play. Matthew and I have it figured out. We can get it done.’ And then, we didn’t even actually run it again until that moment there where we ran it on that fourth down.”
Kupp gained 7 yards on the jet sweep before Jessie Bates and Eli Apple stopped him. Eleven plays later, Stafford found Kupp for a 1-yard touchdown and proved to be the game-winner.
So, what were Stafford and Kupp thinking when McVay called the play?
“Matthew and I looked at each other and are like, ‘Ok, You remember what we said. Remember our cues. Remember what we said would make this work.’ Then, we were able to execute it,” Kupp said.
