Los Angeles Rams haven’t lost an NFC title game since 1989

The Los Angeles Rams simply don’t stumble into NFC Championship Games. 

They arrive at them dragging history behind them–sometimes like a banner, and sometimes like an anchor. Every single era in the Rams history has left fingerprints on January football, from the blunt-force heartbreak of the 1970s, to the success of the ‘Greatest Show on Turf,’ to the sharp-edged confidence of Sean McVay’s modern machine. 

The Rams will travel to Seattle for their 12th NFC Championship Game on Sunday at Lumen Field, with the winner advancing to Super Bowl LX. 

It’s the third chapter in this season’s story between the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. Each team has won a game against each other with the Rams sporting the number one offense in the NFL, and the Seahawks with the number one defense. 

There’s plenty of optimism for the 12’s in Seattle. The Seahawks are a perfect 3-0 in NFC Championship Games at home, but they have never beaten the Rams in the playoffs (0-2).

Under McVay, the Rams have won 10 playoff games — equal to the total the franchise amassed in the previous 37 years combined, all the way back to 1979. He’s also a perfect 2-0 in NFC Championship Games. That isn’t just improvement. That’s demolition.

But before we get to the present, we must first look back at the Rams past in NFC title games, a path forged in both triumph and disappointment, with scars along the way. 

Here’s the Rams NFC Championship Game history:

The story begins in the Chuck Knox era, when the Rams were regular-season royalty but postseason prisoners.

From 1974 to 1976, Los Angeles reached three straight NFC Championship Games and lost all three. They were tough, disciplined, and stubborn — Knox’s teams always were — but they ran headfirst into better-timed moments. Minnesota, Dallas, Minnesota again. Some losses were close, others were ugly, some were just strange and mysterious. A blocked field goal returned for a touchdown in ’76 felt less like a play and more like a curse written in capital letters. Knox built winners, but the Super Bowl door never opened for him.

That theme lingered.

Ray Malavasi finally pushed the Rams through it in 1979, winning a grimy, defensive NFC Championship against Tampa Bay, 9-0. No fireworks. Just survival. Bud Carson’s defense carried them to Super Bowl XIV, where the Steelers reminded everyone how thin the margin really was. 

Former USC Hall of Fame coach, John Robinson, took over the helm for the Rams and made it back to the NFC Championship Game in 1985 where they ran straight into the buzzsaw that was the ’85 Bears. In 1989, Joe Montana and the 49ers delivered another blunt ending. By then, the Rams were 1-6 in NFC Championship Games, their January reputation set in stone.

Then came a relocation to St. Louis, and with it, reinvention. The Greatest Show on Turf wasn’t just a nickname — it was a cultural shift.

In 1999, the Rams returned to the NFC Championship Game and once again faced Tampa Bay. Once again, it came down to defense, tension, and a single moment. Kurt Warner to Ricky Proehl. That was enough. Two weeks later, the Rams were Super Bowl champions.

Mike Martz kept the engine running.

In 2001, Marshall Faulk pounded the Eagles into submission in the NFC Championship Game, and the Rams punched another ticket to the Super Bowl. That loss to New England would change NFL history forever, but it doesn’t erase what the Rams were to the sport during that time.

However, silence followed. From 2002 through 2016, the Rams vanished from the NFC’s final weekend, drifting through cities and seasons, searching for relevance.

It came in a 30-year-old coordinator named Sean McVay.

An unpopular hire at the time, he was considered a huge risk by all pundits. But McVay was a risk Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke was willing to take. He became the head coach in 2017 and the Rams franchise once again changed forever. 

The NFC Championship Games under McVay have been different. Cleaner. Louder. Colder-blooded.

“I think what we’ve tried to do a really good job of is controlling the things that we can control and having the wisdom and perspective,” said McVay of his success in NFC Championship games. “Let’s lean into the things that give us the best opportunity to have successful outcomes. Let’s spend our physical, emotional and mental energy on the things that we can control and not waste our time on the things that we can’t.”

In the 2018 season (played in January 2019), the Rams couldn’t control the chaos inside the Superdome in New Orleans. The Saints were better that night — until they weren’t. Overtime ended with Greg Zuerlein’s kick splitting the uprights and an entire stadium holding its breath. It wasn’t pretty, but it was unflinching. The Rams advanced to Super Bowl LIII because they refused to blink.

“My favorite memories are the shared experiences after you achieve a goal,” said McVay of his preferred moments from that 2018 NFC Championship Game. “There are a lot of moments within that game I remember.”

Three years later, the Rams hosted their ghosts.

Down 10 points in the fourth quarter against the 49ers in the 2021 NFC Championship Game (played in 2022), McVay’s team did what Rams teams before them never could — they hunted pressure instead of running from it. Matthew Stafford. Cooper Kupp. A season’s worth of belief condensed into 15 minutes. The comeback sent the Rams to Super Bowl LVI, where they finished the job and made McVay the youngest head coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl.

“We go down 10 in that game and the resolve and the ability to stay present. We had to come from behind. Everybody had a hand in being able to get that done,” recalled McVay of the 2021 NFC Championship Game against the 49ers. “What I remember the most is the enjoyment of doing something special with people that you care about and the relationships that are built in the midst of the journey.”

That’s why the numbers matter now.

The Rams are 5–6 all-time in NFC Championship Games.

“You have to go out there and still find a way to play aggressive but also take what they’re giving you just like you do every single game,” said Rams’ quarterback Matthew Stafford who led the team’s comeback in that 2021 NFC Title Game. “That was a great memory. Hopefully we’ll make another good one on Sunday.”

This Sunday, they step into new territory again. For the first time ever, the Rams and Seahawks will meet in an NFC Championship Game.

Sunday isn’t about ghosts or curses or symmetry. It’s about a franchise that learned how to finish. And a coach who treats the biggest stage like his own home turf.