The shocking play that had Rams’ Sean McVay thinking he ‘must have taken a quaalude’

The images from Week 3 still doesn’t feel real to Rams head coach Sean McVay.

First, Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter crashed through the line to block field goal midway through the fourth quarter. Then another blocked field goal sent the game into pure chaos, a 44-yard kick that would have put the Rams up with the clock expiring.

Instead, the 336-pound Eagles DT Jordan Davis rumbled 61 yards the other direction at 18.59 mph — the fastest recorded speed by a player over 330 pounds since Next Gen Stats began tracking the metric in 2017.

A surreal sight that McVay can only wish was a hallucinogenic trip gone bad.

Jordan Davis #90 of the Philadelphia Eagles returns a blocked field goal for a touchdown against the Los Angeles Rams during the fourth quarter at Lincoln Financial Field on September 21, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Getty Images

The ending to the Rams’ 33-26 collapse against the Philadelphia Eagles felt so absurd that his brain still can’t comprehend exactly what went wrong.

“We ran it on first and 10 to get to second and three and I’m like, ‘All right, we’re good,’” McVay recalled on his appearance on the “Bussin’ with the Boys” podcast.

“I thought to myself, man, I must have taken a quaalude because this can’t be real life I’m watching right now.”

McVay brought up another reference to the sedative-hypnotic medication later in the episode. The famous delayed-Quaalude scene from “The Wolf of Wall Street” featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, as then- stockbroker and future financial criminal Jordan Belfort crawling his way toward a Lamborghini while reality completely unravels around him.

“How about that Leonardo DiCaprio?” McVay joked later. “You don’t think that’s funny as hell when he took a quaalude and the ‘lemmons’ hit late and he thought he’d get home without a scratch on the car?”

For the Rams, though, there was nothing funny about what happened at Lincoln Financial Field.

Los Angeles led 26-7 at one point and still held a 26-21 advantage midway through the fourth quarter before the Eagles incredible fourth quarter feats changed the outcome. The Eagles marched down the field on a 91-yard touchdown drive led by Jalen Hurts to take the lead.

Head coach Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams looks on during the third quarter against the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on September 21, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Getty Images

Still, the Rams had one final chance, but that was blocked. Literally.

The surreal ending became more than just a painful Week 3 loss. It became a defining snapshot of a special teams unit that slowly unraveled throughout the season.

McVay admitted after the game that the breakdowns weren’t isolated mistakes.

“I hate to say I reviewed every kick this season, but I did,” McVay said. “There seems to be a lot of personnel turnover, a lot of solution-finding there. Is it personnel? Is it technique? Is it execution? It’s all those things.”

The Rams finished 32nd in special teams DVOA in 2025 after ranking 19th in 2024 and 26th in 2023, a steady decline that eventually forced sweeping changes. What initially looked like one bizarre meltdown against the Eagles ultimately became a warning sign for a unit that continued costing the Rams in critical moments throughout the year.

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Karty was eventually waived after converting just 10 of 15 field-goal attempts while seeing multiple kicks blocked during the season. Former undrafted kicker Harrison Mevis took over and stabilized the operation, while longtime snapper Jake McQuaide replaced Alex Ward.

The coaching staff changes were even more dramatic.

In the first in-season coaching move of McVay’s tenure, the Rams fired special teams coordinator Chase Blackburn after repeated miscues culminated in a crushing late-season collapse against the Seattle Seahawks. Los Angeles later hired respected special teams coach Bubba Ventrone to overhaul the unit entering 2026.

The irony is that McVay genuinely loved the team that suffered through the chaos.

“When I saw that when I saw that field goal get blocked. But I’ll tell you this though, that that s–t sucked in the moment, but our group used all those to callus them the right way,” McVay said. “And we came up short, but like that’s one of my all-time favorite teams because of the way that they competed because of who they became.”

But whenever people look back on that season, the defining image may always be Davis — all 336 pounds of him — barreling toward the end zone at nearly 19 miles per hour while a stunned McVay could only watch the scene unfold, helplessly realizing in real time that reality had completely slipped out of his control.

The football version of a delayed Quaalude scene.