INGLEWOOD, Calif. — When Sam Darnold dropped back to pass, shifted his eyes downfield and in the direction of Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the Los Angeles Rams defenders realized they were exactly where they wanted to be.
All week, they had to hear how explosive the Seattle Seahawks were entering this matchup between 7-2 teams atop the NFC West. How they led the league in yards per attempt by an entire yard. How Smith-Njigba had supplanted their own Puka Nacua as the NFL’s leading receiver, now on pace for a 2,000-yard season.
They didn’t ask to lose Quentin Lake to an elbow injury and were left hurting for their captain, just like they didn’t ask to lose top outside cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon to a broken clavicle in Week 2.
But they grew up dreaming about being in these moments. And with four interceptions of Darnold in a 21-19 victory, Sunday represented the moment when dreams could become more than a vision.
There was Kamren Kinchens, a 2024 third-round pick, staring into Darnold’s eyes on the Seahawks’ first possession, patiently waiting. The Rams had called a contain rush to force Darnold to stay in the pocket and throw across the middle, so he decided late to go to Cooper Kupp on a deep comeback, only for Kinchens to snag it first as if he were playing center field.
There was Cobie Durant, a 2022 fourth-round pick who was a rotational player to begin the season, now living on an island along the sideline with the NFL’s leading receiver. Rams linebacker Byron Young tossed Darnold to the turf as the quarterback threw to the ultimate safety valve in Smith-Njigba, and Durant stepped in front of him for the pick.
There was Kinchens, again, undercutting a seam route from the slot to snag the ball for his second pick from the deep safety spot.
And there was Darious Williams, a man with 70 career starts who’d been benched to begin his eighth NFL season, jumping a route as Darnold threw low and under duress in the fourth quarter.
“They want to throw the ball,” Kinchens said. “A lot of people want to run the ball and chip their way down the field, so for people who want to put it down the field and give us a shot: big mistake.”
He spoke with the confidence of a man who has forced four turnovers in three weeks and just had his second two-interception game against the Seahawks in the past two seasons. He’s a reflection of what they’re all feeling in the secondary right now.
“It ain’t easy back there,” linebacker Omar Speights said. “Sometimes it takes just a little bit to get in your groove and to be comfortable with yourself and the defense, and to learn how to play your part in the defense. I think they’ve found that.”
It’s not easy when the defense is the lowest-paid unit in the NFL. And it’s especially not easy when the man tasked with communicating the week’s game plan before the snap has to leave early in the second half. Josh Wallace filled in for the injured Lake, and the Rams had to find a way to control their emotions and their play for two quarters without the versatility of a player who had logged every single snap this season.
“He’s the heart and soul of our defense,” Wallace said.
Wallace is an undrafted free agent in his second season and had 186 career defensive snaps before Sunday. But he was hard to notice as the Seahawks threw again and again to come back, though they finished with just one completion of more than 20 yards in the air.
As surging as Matthew Stafford and Davante Adams were in the month leading up to this NFC West showdown, it all was disappearing against a Seahawks defense with an elite pair of edge rushers in DeMarcus Lawrence and Leonard Williams, a top-five draft pick at outside cornerback in Devon Witherspoon, and a scheme from Mike MacDonald that blurs its coverages between man and zone.
After connecting for six touchdowns over their previous three games, Stafford and Adams found each other for a 1-yard touchdown in the first quarter, but that was their only connection of the day. Adams finished with 1 receiving yard on eight targets, and Stafford finished with just 130 yards on a season-low 4.6 yards per attempt.
“For me in particular, this is one I wish I could delete from the tape forever,” Adams said. “It makes you feel even better when you can play like crap, like we feel on offense, and still come out with a victory against a really good team.”
The postgame video after a wild Rams win over the Seahawks to take control of first place in the NFC West.
On an off day for the passing game and all the plays the defense made to get the dub: pic.twitter.com/ZoWD13PziV
— Nate Atkins (@NateAtkins_) November 17, 2025
Even after Los Angeles jumped out to a 14-3 lead and led by two scores late in the fourth quarter, it was the defense going back onto the field, clinging to a 21-19 lead with 1:41 remaining after Stafford and Adams couldn’t connect on a third down. They got a boost from Ethan Evans’ 50-yard punt that he angled out of bounds at the 1-yard line. But the Seahawks only needed a field goal to win, had two timeouts and featured a kicker in Jason Myers who had already hit from 57 yards in this game.
But there was Emmanuel Forbes Jr. locked tight with Smith-Njigba just past midfield in the waning seconds. Rather than play the man and do whatever he could to get him on the ground, he had a hand on his back and threw the other at the ball. The officials threw a defensive pass interference call that was borderline. But the moment burned a play and kept Smith-Njigba from creating another one of the spinning catch-and-run explosive highlights that are defining his third season.
Forbes did it almost one year to the day after he was benched and waived by the Washington Commanders, who selected him 16th overall in the 2023 NFL Draft. The Rams were willing to live with the early growing pains for a player still building his frame, tackling form and confidence, which meant giving up some plays in early-season losses to the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers.
But this is the upside that can appear with a player with 4.3-second 40-yard dash speed. He can press a deep-ball artist like Rashid Shaheed at the line, get beat deep on a fade to the end zone and still catch up to swat it away.
“I didn’t give up,” Forbes said.
That was the story of that play and of Forbes’ resurgent season so far.
Forbes matched up with Smith-Njigba for 20 routes on Sunday, the most attention the NFL’s leading receiver has seen from a single defender in any game this season. Smith-Njigba caught 3 of 5 passes for 30 yards and averaged 1.5 yards per route run, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats.
It’s easy from the outside to see the Rams as lucky, needing four interceptions from Darnold to pull out a two-point win at home by just a few yards on a missed kick. Their offense looked mortal without the Stafford-Adams connection, with Nacua fumbling and with two of their three touchdowns coming on drives of 25 and 3 yards.
But with McVay’s personality setting the tone for everything, the Rams see positives in all victories and defeats. What they saw Sunday was a defense that created four interceptions and found a way to beat an elite team on a day when they didn’t have their fastball.
They saw that potential earlier in the week in a matchup that looked like a nightmare on paper.
“To most people’s eyes, when they look at stats, they’ll see (Darnold) with (about) 300 yards, JSN with (over 100 yards) or something like that,” Kinchens said. “But they don’t see all the opportunities there are with the ball. JSN might go up over two or three people. To us, that’s an opportunity. We feel like we have ball skills to go and make that play.”
In a matter of two months since losing Witherspoon, the Rams have gone from a secondary trying not to lose the game to a unit that can win one. Along the way, a Rams team defined nationally by its quarterback, receivers, head coach and pass rush found a new layer of confidence.
It had Adams letting a celebratory F-bomb out on his way to the podium before praising the defense. It had McVay sprinting into the postgame locker room and hugging Kinchens. And it had Kinchens, with a smile as wide as ever, breaking the whole team down after his two-interception day.
This wasn’t a championship celebration. The Rams still have seven games to go in a division race with three teams within a game and a half, where the difference between first and second place could be the No. 1 or No. 5 seed in the NFC.
Instead, this is what it looks and sounds like when a first-place team finds a new piece of itself.
“Defense wins championships,” Durant said, “and I feel like we’ve got that mentality.”
