Column: Falcons close out playoff game, end Rams’ season

One after another, Rams players and coaches walked through the Los Angeles Coliseum’s western tunnel, and raised a hand to salute the fans who lined the railings and cheered.

The cheers were for what the Rams had done in the regular season, not for what they did Saturday in their quickly over postseason appearance.

No matter the 26-13 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, what the Rams accomplished the previous fourth months to get here was momentous.

“We’re not satisfied with the way the season ended,” Rams coach Sean McVay said. “But it doesn’t take away from what our players and coaches accomplished this season.”

An NFL playoff game was staged in L.A. for the first time in 24 years.

“It was going,” Rams quarterback Jared Goff said of the atmosphere. “It’s very good to see — coming from when I first got here last year all the way up to now. I’m very happy and (it is also) bittersweet for the fans the fans. I know this was a special day for the fans.”

The Atlanta Falcons were able to hold onto a double-digit playoff lead this time in their first postseason game since letting go a 28-3 second-half lead and losing Super Bowl LI to the Patriots last February.

And so the season that turned around a franchise and set the tone for the “Fight for L.A.” is over.

The Rams, who left St. Louis for their former L.A. home a year before the Chargers departed San Diego, walked away disappointed at what they did Saturday but undoubtedly having won the first round over their supposed rivals and future renters.

Making the playoffs after an 11-5 season only accentuated that fact.

To help make that even clearer for those assembled Saturday, two planes circled the Coliseum about two hours before kickoff. Paid for by contributions to the GoFundMe campaign that San Diegan Joseph MacRae established to pay to fly messages over most Chargers games this season, the planes, flying one behind the other, toted banners that read, “Worst owner in sports? Dean Spanos. Sell the team” and “NFL, LA is home of the Rams and Raiders. No one else!”

It was the L.A. Raiders who had played the most recent playoff game in the Coliseum, in 1994, before they departed for Oakland.

But it was the Rams who came back when their owner, Stan Kroenke, promised to build a stadium in Inglewood that will open in 2020 and house the Rams and Chargers.

And it turns out Angelenos do like NFL football and even show up to cheer for one of the teams that calls L.A. home.

Members of the 1979 Los Angeles Rams, the last Rams team to play a postseason game in the Coliseum, pushed a button to light the torch atop the old stadium and fireworks exploded above that and some 70,000 fans waved white towels and there was a genuine frenzy on Figueroa.

Then Pharoh Cooper didn’t run up to catch a punt he should have. Then Cooper fumbled at the end of a kickoff return. There were more slips and drops by the team that led the NFL in scoring this season, and they were behind 13-0 midway through the first quarter.

The Rams, too young to be daunted, too new to being good to concede so quickly, started making big plays, including Jared Goff’s 14-yard touchdown pass to Cooper Kupp to make it 13-7.

Then Matt Ryan slipped and was sacked. And sacked again on the next play.

Then Robert Woods laid out to haul in a 38-yard bomb at the 7-yard line. Then Sam Ficken, kicking in his third game ever, made a field goal with three seconds remaining in the first half to make it 13-10.

Then Snoop Dogg, who had been watching the first half from the front row behind one end zone, did a mini-concert at the 50-yard line at halftime, complete with some altered lyrics to “Drop It Like It’s Hot.”

“When the Rams hit the field …”

“And if a Falcon gets an attitude …”

Atlanta was up 19-10 at the start of the fourth quarter before the Rams got another field goal. But the Falcons answered with an 83-yard touchdown drive.

The Rams drove to the Atlanta 5 with two minutes remainig but got no further, as the defending NFC champions closed out the upstart team with just six players with prior playoff experience.

Sure, the Rams were ultimately doomed because early on they took a page from the Chargers’ playoff playbook, making mistakes in the postseason they didn’t make in the regular season and going one-and-out, there can be no diminishing what the Rams did in their first playoff season since 2004.

They had been the second-worst team in the NFL, at 60-131-1 just 2½ games better than the Browns since the start of ‘05.

And here they were keep an L.A. crowd announced at 74,300 – almost 10,000 more than the Rams listed as their regular season capacity in the 93,000-seat Coliseum – interested for almost the entirety of an NFL playoff game.

kevin.acee@sduniontribune.com