St. Louis Rams

The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994.

The arrival of the Rams, which originated in Cleveland before moving to Los Angeles in 1946, gave St. Louis a professional football team for the first time since the St. Louis Cardinals left for Arizona in 1987.

The Rams played their home games at what is now known as The Dome at America's Center in downtown St. Louis, which the city had been building for a few years in the hopes of gaining an NFL team. Dubbed the Trans World Dome, the stadium was unready when the team arrived, so it temporarily shared Busch Memorial Stadium with the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball (MLB). The Rams played their first game in St. Louis on September 10, 1995, defeating the New Orleans Saints, 17–13. The Trans World Dome opened on November 12, 1995, when the Rams defeated the Carolina Panthers 28–17.

The franchise notched its first winning season and playoff appearance as a St. Louis team in 1999, and went on to win its first and only championship in Super Bowl XXXIV. That season began a four-year run of success with The Greatest Show on Turf offense, which included a franchise-best 14–2 record in 2001 en route to a Super Bowl XXXVI appearance, but the Rams struggled throughout their remaining years in St. Louis. By the time they moved back to Los Angeles, the Rams had gone 12 seasons without a winning record and 11 seasons without qualifying for the postseason.

The Rams played their last game in St. Louis on December 17, 2015, defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31–23 in a home stadium that had been renamed the Edward Jones Dome. Their last game as a St. Louis-based franchise was on January 3, 2016, against the San Francisco 49ers at Levi's Stadium, which they lost 19–16. After the 2015 NFL season, the team returned to Los Angeles.

Origins

Cardinals move to Arizona and begin new approach

For 22 of their 28 years, the St. Louis Cardinals called Busch Memorial Stadium home when it opened in 1966, after spending their first six seasons in St. Louis at Sportsman's Park; they shared both venues with the baseball team of the same name. The overall mediocrity of the football Cardinals, combined with stadium problems, caused attendance to dwindle. Consequently, the Bidwill family, who had moved the Cardinals from Chicago in 1960, decided to move it a second time. The cities the Bidwills considered included Baltimore, Phoenix, New York City, and Jacksonville, while Columbus and Oakland made overtures without Bidwell considering them. Nonetheless, Cardinals fans were unhappy at losing their team, and Bill Bidwill, fearing for his safety, stayed away from several of the 1987 home games. The Cardinals’ final home game in St. Louis was on December 13, 1987, a 27–24 win over the New York Giants in front of 29,623 fans on a late Sunday afternoon.

Not long after the 1987 season, Bidwill agreed to move to the Phoenix area on a handshake deal with state and local officials, and the team became the Phoenix Cardinals. They planned to play at Arizona State University’s Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe on a temporary basis while a new stadium was being built. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the savings and loan crisis derailed financing for the stadium, forcing the Cardinals to play at Arizona State for 18 years. The team changed its name to the Arizona Cardinals for the 1994 season.

The move to Anaheim

Before the Rams’ 1979 Super Bowl season, the team's owner Carroll Rosenbloom drowned in an accident. His widow, Georgia Frontiere, inherited 70% ownership of the team. Frontiere fired her stepson, Steve Rosenbloom, and assumed total control of the franchise. As had been planned before Carroll Rosenbloom's death, the Rams moved from their longtime home at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to Anaheim Stadium in nearby Orange County in 1980. The move was necessitated in part because the Coliseum's abnormally large seating capacity of 100,000 was difficult to sell out, which often subjected the team to the league's local-market TV blackout rule. At the same time, Southern California's population patterns were changing; there was rapid growth in L.A.’s affluent suburbs (e.g. greater Orange County) and a decline in the city of Los Angeles’s population and income.Stellino, Vito; ‘Rams’ shopping bag is filled with NFL frustration’; '' Baltimore Sun'', November 25, 1993, p. 1D Anaheim Stadium was originally built in 1966 as the home of the California Angels Major League Baseball franchise. To accommodate the Rams’ move, the ballpark was reconfigured with luxury suites and enclosed to accommodate crowds of about 65,000 for football.

From 1982, the Coliseum was also occupied by the Los Angeles Raiders. The combined effect of these two factors split the loyalties of the Rams’ traditional fan base between two teams. Making matters even worse, the Rams were unsuccessful on the field, while the Raiders were thriving, winning Super Bowl XVIII in 1983. The Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA Finals in 1980, their first of five titles in that decade; the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in 1981 and 1988; and the Los Angeles Kings, buoyed by the acquisition of Wayne Gretzky in August 1988, advanced to the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals.

1990–94: Frontiere’s endgame for the L.A. Rams

Although it was not apparent at the time, the Rams’ loss in the 1989 NFC Championship Game marked the end of an era. The Rams did not have another winning season in Los Angeles before their relocation. The first half of the 1990s featured four straight 10-loss (or worse) seasons, no playoff appearances and waning fan interest. The return of Chuck Knox as head coach after successful stints as head coach of the Buffalo Bills and the Seattle Seahawks did not boost the Rams’ fortunes. Knox's run-oriented offense brought about the end of offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese’s tenure in 1993. General manager John Shaw was perceived by some to continually squander NFL draft picks on sub-standard talent. The offensive scheme was not only unspectacular to watch, but dull by 1990s standards, further alienating fans. One bright spot for the offense during this time was be running back Jerome Bettis, a bruising running back from Notre Dame. Bettis flourished in Knox’s offense, running for 1,429 yards as a rookie and 1,025 in his sophomore effort.

As early as the close of the 1992 season, Georgia Frontiere announced she wanted to break the Rams’ lease at Anaheim Stadium. After the 1993 season, Frontiere attempted to move the Rams to Baltimore, but her fellow owners turned that proposal down. Frontiere then sought to relocate the team to St. Louis, but was voted down again, with 21 opposed, 3 in favor (the Rams, Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers), and 6 abstaining. The other owners (led by Buffalo's Ralph Wilson, the Jets’ Leon Hess, the Giants’ Wellington Mara, Washington's Jack Kent Cooke, Arizona's Bill Bidwill and Minnesota's John Skoglund) believed that the Rams’ financial problems were caused by the Frontieres’ mismanagement. When Frontiere threatened to sue the league, commissioner Paul Tagliabue acquiesced to Frontiere's demands. As part of the relocation deal, the city of St. Louis agreed to build a taxpayer-financed stadium, the Trans World Dome, and guaranteed that the stadium's amenities would be maintained in the top 25% of all NFL stadiums. Frontiere waived the clause after a 10-year threshold period passed, as the city implemented a later plan to improve the stadium.

The move left many in the Los Angeles area embittered toward the NFL. That sentiment was best expressed by actor and ex-Ram Fred Dryer, who at the time said “I hate these people he organization and its ownerfor what they did, taking the Rams logo with them when they moved to St. Louis. That logo belonged to Southern California.” Steve Rosenbloom, general manager of the team during his father's tenure as owner, opined that teams come and go, but for a team to leave Los Angeles — the second largest city in America — for St. Louis (approximately the 18th-largest) was simply irresponsible and foolish, despite the notoriously fickle support of Los Angeles fans. With the Raiders moving from L.A. back to Oakland only a few months later, the NFL would have no franchise in Los Angeles for two decades, with the Coliseum was used for professional football only in 2001, by the Los Angeles Xtreme of the now-defunct XFL.

First years (1995–1998)

While the Rams dealt with stadium concerns in Los Angeles, efforts were under way to regain an NFL franchise in St. Louis to play in a new domed stadium slated to open in 1995. First, Anheuser-Busch scion Jim Orthwein tried, and failed, to move the New England Patriots to St. Louis. Then, despite being heavily favored along with Charlotte to win an expansion team, St. Louis lost to a group from Jacksonville, Florida. So certain, in fact, did it appear that St. Louis would gain an expansion franchise, that the team had a name selected – the Stallions – and T-shirts with the team's logo were made very briefly available for sale at a number of area sports shops.

Just before moving to St. Louis, the Rams fired Knox and hired Rich Brooks, longtime successful coach at the University of Oregon, to replace him. The team played its first several games in St. Louis at Busch Stadium, the home of the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals from 1966 until 1987, as work finished on their new home, the Trans World Dome. Brooks jettisoned Knox's run-oriented scheme in favor of a powerful air attack. Bettis all but disappeared from the offense, rushing for only 637 yards. Despite this, the Rams started off well, getting off to a 5–1 start, until a 44–10 loss to the 49ers in the last game at Busch Stadium sent the team into a downward spiral, and they finished 7–9 — still the franchise's closest to contention since 1989. Perhaps the most memorable aspect was that veteran offensive lineman and future Hall of Famer Jackie Slater played his 20th and final season with the team in its new St. Louis location.

Vermeil era

The next three seasons were largely a repeat of the Rams’ final five seasons in Los Angeles. The team drafted highly touted Nebraska running back Lawrence Phillips with the sixth overall pick in the 1996 NFL Draft. Now expendable, Bettis was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for draft picks, a move now seen as one of the most lopsided trades in professional sports history, strongly favoring the Steelers. After regressing to 6–10 in 1996, Brooks was replaced by Dick Vermeil. Vermeil had enjoyed success as the head coach of UCLA, where he won a Rose Bowl, and the Philadelphia Eagles, who he led to Super Bowl XV. However, he had left the Eagles after an unsuccessful 1982 season, claiming burnout, and spent much of the next decade and a half as a college football commentator for ABC Sports.

Vermeil's first two seasons as Rams coach were as unsuccessful as many of the preceding seasons. Phillips was cut from the team mid-season in 1997 after showing up for a game with alcohol on his breath, cementing his status as a draft bust.

At the close of the 1998 season, the franchise's combined record over nine seasons was 45–99, the worst in the NFL for the period and rivalled by only the Cincinnati Bengals, who went 49–97 over the same span.

1999–2001: The Greatest Show on Turf

1999: Super Bowl champions

Finally, in 1999, there appeared to be reason for hope. The Rams obtained running back Marshall Faulk from Indianapolis in a trade. The Rams also signed former-Redskin quarterback Trent Green as a free agent in February 1999 to a 4-year $17.5 million contract that included a $4.5 million signing bonus. Additionally, the Rams drafted wide receiver Torry Holt with the sixth overall pick in the 1999 NFL Draft.

However, in a preseason game against the San Diego Chargers, Green blew out his anterior cruciate ligament and missed the entire season, prompting Green's backup, a 28-year-old former Arena Football League Iowa Barnstormers and NFL Europe Amsterdam Admirals player named Kurt Warner, to enter the game. During postgame press conferences, a tearful Vermeil vowed that the Rams would "rally around" Warner and “play good football” with him. Most observers believed Green's injury set up the Rams for another long season of failure; in fact, ESPN Magazine predicted that the Rams would finish with the worst record in the league (even below that of the recently reactivated Cleveland Browns).

However, Warner would have one of the most explosive starts to a career in football history, throwing for over 4000 yards and 41 touchdowns. His quarterback rating of 109.2 was the highest in the NFL that year. He proved to be the catalyst that sparked an explosive offense nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Turf”, which would lead the NFL in points. Warner captured the NFL MVP award at season's end, while the 1999 NFL Offensive Player of the Year Award went to Faulk.

The Rams were also noted for a colorful celebration conducted by their offensive players in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. The celebration, which involved a group of players standing in a circle and swaying their arms as a football spun like a top in the center of the circle, was known as the “Bob 'N Weave.” This type of “premeditated and prolonged” display was shortly thereafter subject to “excessive celebration” penalties installed by the league.

After finishing the 1999 season 13–3 (the franchise's second-best regular season record to date), the Rams started out the playoffs by defeating the Minnesota Vikings 49–37 to achieve their first NFC championship game since 1989. Their opponent was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who proved successful in shutting down the Rams’ vaunted offense. Still, the Rams managed to win the game 11–6, with the one touchdown coming on Warner's 30-yard touchdown pass to Ricky Proehl, who made an amazing one-handed catch. Proehl, a 10-year NFL veteran who was in the playoffs for the first time in his NFL career, said after the game “There are a lot of people who say there are 500 Ricky Proehls out there. I beg to differ.”

The Rams’ opponent in Super Bowl XXXIV was the Tennessee Titans, who, like the Rams, had recently relocated cities. In a game that many consider the best Super Bowl ever, Tennessee played the Rams tough throughout, achieving a 16–16 tie with 2:12 left on an Al Del Greco field goal. On the next drive, Warner, who had been a clutch performer all season long, came through once again, connecting with Isaac Bruce for a 73-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the drive to give the Rams a 23–16 lead with 1:53 to play.

Tennessee then mounted a desperate, last-minute drive, reaching the St. Louis 10-yard line with six seconds left and no timeouts. Titans quarterback Steve McNair threw to Kevin Dyson on a slant. Dyson caught the pass at the 3-yard line but was stopped in a play known as “The Tackle”; Rams linebacker Mike Jones brought Dyson down just 18 inches shy of the goal line, ending the game and giving the Rams and coach Dick Vermeil their first Super Bowl victory. Warner was named Super Bowl MVP.

Following the Rams’ Super Bowl victory, Vermeil retired from football (though he came back in 2001 as head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs) and was replaced by offensive coordinator (and apprentice) Mike Martz.

2000: Wild card loss

In Mike Martz’ first year as Rams head coach, the defending-champion Rams

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