Week 12 win over Saints bumps Rams to No. 3 in NFC playoff picture, for now

Thanks their head-to-head win over the New Orleans Saints in Week 12, the Los Angeles Rams currently hold the No. 3 seed in the NFC playoff picture.

In all honesty, there was some concern surrounding the Los Angeles Rams heading into Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints when looking at all of the struggles surrounding this team one week ago following their brutal loss to the Minnesota Vikings. As bad as it sounds, seeing the Rams lose the way they did to the Vikings made it seem like they didn’t have what it takes to compete with serious contenders, but luckily that is no longer the case.

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Thanks to an impressive 26-20 victory over New Orleans, Los Angeles made a huge statement to prove doubters wrong that they do in fact have what it takes to compete with some of the best. Heading into Sunday’s game, the Saints were considered one of the hottest teams in the NFL thanks to an eight-game winning streak, which makes this win by the Rams even more impressive.

Sure, the argument can be made that this game would have been much different if New Orleans was fully healthy on the defensive side of the football, but Los Angeles was dealing with numerous injuries of their own, mainly Robert Woods (shoulder) on the offensive side of the football. In other words, if the Rams were able to make the necessary adjustments thanks to their depth on the roster, the Saints should have been able to do the same.

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While there were plenty of reasons for Los Angeles to be thrilled over this recent victory against New Orleans, the one factor that sticks out the most is how the Rams got bumped up in the NFC playoff picture to No. 3 instead of No. 4, which is where the Saints currently stand at the moment. This may not seem like a big deal at the moment, but once January rolls around, it’s stuff like this that will become more important to the Rams. As Jared Goff said after Sunday’s game, 8-3 is a lot better than 7-4, and a win like this over New Orleans could work wonders later on when it comes to Los Angeles continuing to battle for playoff seeding in the NFC.