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Bill Plaschke’s perfect Rams season lasted exactly one game.
Four days after predicting Los Angeles would finish 20-0 and win the Super Bowl, the longtime Los Angeles Times columnist opened his account of the Rams’ 27-7 loss to the 49ers by asking the question awaiting him.
“What idiot recently wrote that these Rams were going to go undefeated?” Plaschke wrote.
“This idiot.”
It was a brutal but unusually direct mea culpa from Plaschke, a nine-time Associated Press Sports Columnist of the Year whose prediction was never presented as playful preseason hyperbole.
“The Rams are not losing a game,” he had declared, forecasting a 17-0 regular season followed by three home playoff victories. Plaschke even acknowledged that the argument sounded like a take destined to “embarrass often” before insisting, “No, this is real. This is serious.”
The embarrassment arrived immediately.
The supposedly invincible Rams were overwhelmed by the 49ers at Melbourne Cricket Ground. Matthew Stafford threw for 155 yards with no touchdowns and an interception. Los Angeles scored its fewest points in any Stafford start, while prized acquisition Myles Garrett finished without a tackle, sack or quarterback hit.
Plaschke’s prediction had some historical company.
USA Today famously picked the defending champion Patriots to go 19-0 in 2017 after New England added Brandin Cooks and Stephon Gilmore. Those Patriots also lost their opener, falling 42-27 to Kansas City, although they recovered to finish 13-3 and reach the Super Bowl.
Unlike the Patriots, the Rams entered their opener carrying questions about an unusual travel plan. They arrived roughly 28 hours before kickoff, while San Francisco spent nearly a week acclimating to Melbourne.
Plaschke blamed Sean McVay’s preparation and fourth-and-goal quarterback sneak, called Stafford’s performance one of his worst in years and described Garrett as the game’s most irrelevant player.
It was not Plaschke’s first abrupt retreat. In March 2024, he questioned whether Shohei Ohtani could still be believed and declared him “tainted” amid the Ippei Mizuhara scandal, only to write weeks later that federal investigators had completely vindicated the Dodgers star.
Earlier that year, Plaschke called firing Darvin Ham “dumb and dumber” and urged the Lakers to keep him. By late April, he acknowledged Ham was on the hot seat. The Lakers fired him days later.
The Rams can still recover from one ugly afternoon. Their undefeated season — and Plaschke’s most audacious prediction — cannot.
English (US)