The Los Angeles Rams will face the Arizona Cardinals at home on Saturday in a must-win game for the Rams. Although the Cardinals have been eliminated from the playoffs, they would undoubtedly love to ruin the Rams' playoff hopes on Saturday.
It will be the second time the two teams have played each other this season. Saturday's matchup against the Cardinals allows the Rams to avenge their blowout loss to the Cardinals earlier in the season while getting a step closer to the playoffs.
In their previous matchup in Week 2, the Cardinals beat a shorthanded, banged-up Rams team missing multiple players 41-10. The Rams are eager to face them again as a much healthier team, this time at home instead of on the road.
"Yeah, it seems like that was an eternity ago," McVay said. "These seasons are long, and there are a lot of different experiences. Ultimately, I think the guys have just stayed the course. I do think that a lot of those things that we had to navigate through did provide us a callous, where there’s some of that resilience and that toughness. I think it forced us to develop some depth that we wouldn't have done otherwise. Guys have gotten opportunities to step up.
"Those are challenging things, and really a lot of that stuff started in the offseason and into training camp, and it felt like it was kind of, 'when it rains, it pours,' those first few weeks of the season. Our guys have just stayed the course. They focused on what they could control one day at a time. I loved the response that we had the following week, even though we didn't necessarily start off that game against the Niners the right way.
Rams head coach Sean McVay knows his team will have their hands full on Saturday.
"This is a great football team we have coming in here," McVay said. "Obviously, they posed a lot of different problems for us. We have our work cut out for us and that's why I'll be excited to really jump into them after I get done with you guys here."
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/rams/ as The Rams Absolutely Cannot Afford to Overlook the Cardinals.