Ruminate: Think deeply about something
When the Los Angeles Rams lost to the New England Patriots in the 2018 Super Bowl, it was the type of defeat that completely turned the season and direction of the team on its head, and Les Snead when asked about any “downside” as a General Manage referenced that difficult Super Bowl loss in a recent NFL on CBS interview.
“I do know this, if you ever have a chance to ski for the Gold Medal and you end up with the Silver, there’s not a day that goes by that you don’t think about…there’s some rumination. The pain’s over. it’s dissipated, it takes a while, that physical pain. There’s not a day that goes by that there’s not a moment when you kinda rewind that 2018-19 Super Bowl again New England…I don’t wish that upon anyone.”
It was gutting loss.
- Sean McVay went from one of the most dominant head coaches in the league to getting embarrassed by Bill Belichick.
- Jared Goff, who hoped to call Tom Brady his peer, went from being L.A.’s leader to fans and talking heads questioning how far he could go?
- Aaron Donald, the best non quarterback in the league at the time, went from thinking he’d have his ring to wondering if he’d even win a Super Bowl?
- And of course, Snead, who helped engineer the run while making trades and looking like a genius for hiring McVay after selecting Goff, was now exploring how he could help the team get back to the pinnacle of the sport?
Keep in mind that Snead is still talking about this loss after securing a Super Bowl win a couple seasons later, and maybe it gives an idea of how painful it is to lose in the NFL, but how much more painful it can be to lose the biggest game of the season.
“We lose the Super Bowl in 18. And there was this void inside of Aaron that burned so fiercely. It was so contagious. He didn’t say it, but it’s, “Okay, what can we do to make sure this human being is right? What can we do to help fill the void?” – @RamsNFL GM Les Snead pic.twitter.com/CE4wRgZRmI
— Peter Schrager (@PSchrags) March 19, 2024
Now, I am going to guess that Snead has a few different “downsides” to being a GM, so he may give a different answer or scenario depending on his mood, but for this interview he went with the Super Bowl loss.
In a few years it will have been a decade since that pivotal game in L.A. Rams’ history, and while Snead and others may still ruminate on that game, they are also ruminating on how to get back to another Super Bowl, whether they win it or not.