Last season these two teams were a combined two quarters from a Super Bowl trip. This year they'll have to settle for beating each other up instead.
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MON SEP 28 · 6:20 PM MT
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Rams
Broncos
Denver enters this one carrying the standard it set last season — a franchise-record-tying 14 wins and its first AFC West title since the 2015 Super Bowl run — but the real storyline is health. Bo Nix fractured his ankle in the divisional-round win over Buffalo, had a second procedure to clean up bone spurs, and has spent minicamp insisting he's "as good as new" and could handle full contact if the team let him. Across the field, Matthew Stafford walks in with zero uncertainty at quarterback after locking up his extension, even with rookie Ty Simpson now waiting in the wings.
Both franchises are still carrying the residue of falling one win short of the Super Bowl. The Rams' collapse came via special-teams miscues in the NFC Championship; Denver's came at home, forced to play the AFC title game without Nix while Jarrett Stidham threw a fourth-quarter interception that sealed it. Neither locker room has fully moved on, and this early-season meeting doubles as the first gut-check for both.
For now it's about camp bodies and depth charts. Denver is easing Nix back through OTAs rather than rushing him into team drills, while the Rams are dealing with an off-field distraction after starting left tackle Alaric Jackson's arrest on a felony domestic violence charge — a situation that could reshape the offensive line picture well before kickoff on Sunday, September 27 at 6:20 PM MT.
Los Angeles Rams
Denver Broncos
The tape from January still tells you where both teams stand. Stafford threw for 374 yards and three touchdowns in the NFC Championship loss to Seattle, and that version of him arrives in Denver with Puka Nacua and Davante Adams both still in the fold. The Broncos, meanwhile, are the ones who have to answer whether Nix's surgically repaired ankle holds up against live pressure for the first time since the injury.
Los Angeles Rams
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Fully healthy — no injuries to report
Denver Broncos
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Fully healthy — no injuries to report
Neither team is short on motivation. The Rams want to prove last year's title-game collapse was a fluke; the Broncos want to show the AFC West is theirs to keep, health permitting. Sean McVay and Sean Payton have both been through this kind of gut-check before, and neither figures to blink.
