Matthew Stafford was calm and composed – on the surface in the thick of a frantic fourth quarter.
The Rams quarterback coolly led a seven-play, 71-yard drive with under three minutes to play and found Colby Parkinson for a touchdown to lift the Rams past the Panthers, 34-31, and advance Los Angeles to next week’s divisional playoffs.
But as Davante Adams explained after the win, there was a brute force underneath Stafford’s late-game composure. The Rams said Stafford told him “let’s rip these guys’ hearts out” before leading that game-winning drive.
“It was pretty cold, just hearing that,” Adams, who had five receptions for 72 yards in the win, said on the team’s official site. “And I actually smiled in that moment, because I thought that was one of the most criminal things you could say in that moment, to be honest. And to hear him say that, and the look on his face, and then throw the touchdown, and then the look on his face after that, was just MVP stuff.”
The Stafford-to-Parkinson score was the fourth lead change in the final frame, tied for the most fourth quarter lead changes in a playoff game in NFL history, according to NFL Research.
The 37-year-old veteran delivered a perfect back-shoulder throw that only Parkinson could possibly pull off, and the tight end’s impressive body-turning grab carried him into the end zone.
“He was consistent — it was MVP type of stuff he did,” Rams head coach Sean McVay told reporters. “… He got a lot of different guys to consider. I thought he saw the field really well and that’s why we’re moving forward, because of his leadership.”
Forcing four incompletions on the Panthers’ ensuing drive with 32 seconds left, the Rams celebrated as they escaped Carolina with a win — an unlikely scenario given LA’s hot start.