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Rams defense credits Wade Phillips for putting pieces together

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L.A. Rams head coach Sean McVay is returning home to Georgia for Super Bowl LIII, where he grew up and fell in love with football.

The Rams weren’t afraid to make bold moves to add to their defense, and those moves are paying off in the way they envisioned.

It’s just taken longer than they might have imagined.

From Ndamukong Suh’s run-stopping the last two weeks to Aqib Talib’s ability to limit Saints wideout Michael Thomas to Dante Fowler’s timely pass rush, the Rams are getting high-level production from their collection of big-ticket items. And they credit defensive coordinator Wade Phillips for pushing the right buttons at the right times.

We have a Hall of Fame D coordinator,” Talib said, via Lindsey Thiry of ESPN.com. “He put together a great game plan, and for the most part we did a good job executing. . . .

“We ain’t playing out here. Coach Wade, when the time comes he really gets in that bag and he really dials in . . . that’s all coach Wade.”

It helps having parts to work with, and the Rams were aggressive last offseason and into the regular season.

It started with using the franchise tag on safety Lamarcus Joyner ($11.28 million). They traded for Talib and Marcus Peters, who carried sizeable contracts in the door with them. Then came Suh on a one-year, $14 million deal, and then then made defensive tackle Aaron Donald the highest-paid defensive player in the league (a six-year extension worth $135 million). Compared to that splurge, flipping a few picks to rent Fowler late in the year was a bargain.

At points in the season, it didn’t appear to be a wise investment. They gave up big chunks of yards in the air when Talib was on injured reserve for eight weeks, and they gave up a league-worst 5.1 yards per carry (and 122.9 per game) during the regular season.

But Talib held Thomas to four catches for 36 yards last week, and the Rams have held the Cowboys and Saints to 49 rushing yards per game, a stingy 2.3-yard per carry.

“Wade kind of switched up the game plan during the season, which made it a little easier on us,” Fowler said. “He’s a mastermind and he finds ways. He knows his players. . . .

“Guys just stepping up to the plate and taking their game up a notch, knowing what’s at stake. And we are where we want to go.”

But it wasn’t cheap to get there, and it wasn’t easy.