The Los Angeles Rams were off in Week 9, and they didn’t gain any ground in the NFC West while sitting idly by. Both the 49ers and Seahawks won their games, albeit by narrow margins, to keep pulling further ahead of the Rams.
San Francisco is now three games clear of the Rams, while Seattle is 1.5 ahead of them. Yet, as badly as the Rams want to win the division for a third straight year, Sean McVay is focused on the task at hand: beating Pittsburgh on Sunday.
He was asked this week about the competitiveness of the NFC West and what he thinks about the tight race, and his answer made it clear that he’s not looking too far ahead.
“It’s cliché, but I think the focus is on let’s try to go 1-0 against a really good Pittsburgh Steelers team that’s playing at a high level, especially over the last few weeks,” McVay said. “They’re a resilient, tough football team, very well-coached. Opportunistic on defense, they make you pay and they’re smart with how they move the football efficiently offensively. For us, it’s really just about winning our sixth game. This league has so many ebbs and flows, we’re halfway through. So much can be changed in the eight weeks. I think one of the things that has helped us over the last couple of years that you have to really be conscious about is not looking ahead. So many things are unpredictable. You start looking ahead, you don’t take care of the business at hand. The only thing that we can do is find a way to try to put together a good week of practice and really go 1-0 this week and ultimately try to get our sixth win of the season.”
The Rams will have a hard time catching the 49ers for the division crown, having just one game left against them. however, they’re right in the thick of things in for a wild-card berth, even if they are currently the No. 7 seed in the conference.
Sure, the Rams would have loved to start with a better record than 5-3, but they can only control the next eight weeks. And in those eight weeks, they probably need to win at least five of them in order to make the postseason.
That starts with the Steelers on Sunday, which is McVay’s primary focus right now.
