Why Rich Hopes Bills vs Rams Week 5 OT Thriller is a Super Bowl LXI Preview

If Monday night in SoFi Stadium was a preview of Super Bowl LXI, Rich has one response: sign him up.

The scenario he laid out on The Rich Eisen Show takes some work. The Rams put together four quarters of clean football, get healthy, start stringing wins together and reach the Super Bowl in their own building. Across the field is a Bills team that finally makes it there with Josh Allen at quarterback. "In other words, if what we saw last night is a preview of Super Bowl 61, sign me up," Rich said.

He knows not everyone is on board. Chiefs fans would point out they're 4-0. Vikings fans would object. Niners fans would remind everyone they consider SoFi their home away from home, even though the Rams beat them in the NFC Championship game in that building the one year the Super Bowl was played there. Rich's point stands anyway. That game was nuts.

It sure didn't start that way. At halftime it was 13-7, and Rich was asking where all the points went. Then came what he called "points-a-palooza," one touchdown after another. Troy Aikman said it during the broadcast and the rest of America knew it too: whoever had the ball last was going to win. Nobody knew that would happen in overtime.

Rich was screaming at his screen and texting his group chats late in regulation with one piece of advice: the Rams should just let James Cook score. With time running out, the Rams were better off conceding the touchdown than burning timeouts and leaving themselves 40-something seconds to answer with a field goal drive. Cook scored anyway with a minute and change left, and the Rams tied it with a timeout still in their back pocket. They didn't even need it. "That's how on tilt all these offenses were in regulation," Rich said.

Then there was Allen. He piled up 107 scramble yards, the second most of his career, and finished with 121 rushing yards on 10 carries to go with 210 passing yards. He led the Bills in rushing and had more rushing yards than the entire Rams team, which ran for 77 while Matthew Stafford threw it more than 50 times.

Rich acknowledged the obvious. Any running back would love to carry the ball with every defender either behind him or running the other way. But short yardage Allen is unstoppable, and so are his designed runs. "This guy is the Shohei Ohtani of the National Football League," Rich said. "He's two players in one."

Even with all of that, the Rams had the game set up. Their defense clearly came in with a plan to punch at the ball whenever Cook carried it, and it worked twice. One of those fumbles landed at the feet of Aaron Donald for his first fumble recovery since his return, and it came in overtime just as Khalil Shakir had been running free and the Bills looked headed for another touchdown. All the Rams needed was a field goal.

Stafford was doing his MVP thing, finishing 40 of 54 for 383 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. Then the Rams got into range for Harrison Mevis, who had already missed on the night, and went conservative. "There's the only phrase for it. It looked like they turtled up," Rich said. They ran it on third and five and got nothing, and Rich noticed Davante Adams throwing his hands up on the sideline.

Sure enough, the kick was blocked. Greg Rousseau, who Rich said "has been balling out this year," came through the protection like the Bills had spotted something on film and picked him to exploit it. It was one more special teams meltdown for the Rams, and Buffalo won it with its own field goal right after the two-minute warning in overtime.

The Bills had to have it. At 4-1, they stayed in first place through five weeks with the Patriots, fresh off a win over the Raiders, right behind them. Without that block, they'd have been in second.