INGLEWOOD — As Aaron Donald came off the field Sunday evening, after harassing Joe Burrow into one last incompletion in the final minute and finally burying the Cincinnati Bengals’ improbable championship hopes, he tapped his wrist as if he were motioning to his watch.

The implication? Pick one. It’s winnin’ time. Or it’s about time.

Either way, what the Rams did in at long last adding their name to L.A.’s list of championship teams might not yet resonate with Greater L.A. yet. But it certainly has with a fan base that has grown in their six seasons back in L.A., and promises to grow further, thanks to the attention of these last two weeks and particularly the outcome Sunday night, when another Matthew Stafford fourth-quarter comeback gave the Rams a 23-20 victory and the franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy overall and first in Los Angeles.

(And for those following along during the week, owner Stan Kroenke took the high road in this celebration, allowing only that SoFi Stadium, his $5.5 billion project, sort of turned out OK. That’s kind of an understatement. If you don’t count traffic and parking, which were even more of a mess on Super Bowl Sunday than they were the rest of the week, this state-of-the-art stadium was such a hit with the league’s representatives here that you can bet it’ll be back in the Super Bowl rotation as soon as possible.)

This was the blueprint all along, even if it had been delayed by a year after weather issues paused construction. This stadium was supposed to be a showplace worthy of the country’s second-largest market. And once it was understood that Super Bowl LVI would be here, the building of the Rams’ roster seemed to be a mandate from the top. They were to make sure they would be participants in that first SoFi Super Bowl.

And so it was. The Rams became the second consecutive team to win the Super Bowl in its own building, although fans of the Bengals might not have been more plentiful but were certainly louder. (It is technically a neutral site, after all.) And they did so with the grit and resilience that has characterized this team for much of the last few weeks, especially after a cruelly wacky sequence at the beginning of the second half that threatened to derail it all.

The Rams led 13-10 at halftime. Within 10 plays and 4:45 of the third quarter they trailed 20-13, a sequence that included a 75-yard scoring pass from Joe Burrow to Tee Higgins on which Jalen Ramsey fell down (possibly with Higgins’ help) and Stafford threw an interception that bounced in and out of rookie Ben Skowronek’s hands on the very next play.

Stafford made up for it in the end, engineering a 15-play, fourth-quarter drive that consumed nearly five minutes and gave the Rams the lead with 1:25 left when he found Cooper Kupp in the end zone.

It was appropriate that Stafford’s latest game-winning drive sealed the championship, given the expectations when the Rams rescued him from a forlorn Detroit situation last January. And it was even more appropriate that Donald helped close the deal, given that the team-wide theme leading up to this game was to make sure the NFL’s best defensive player finally got the championship that had eluded him and the Rams three years ago in Atlanta.

“This team is as mentally tough a team as I’ve ever been on,” said safety Eric Weddle, who went from retired to calling the defensive signals in the span of five weeks and contributed five tackles en route to his first championship in 15 seasons as a pro.

“And to be able to have the ebbs and flows of a game over the last five weeks, you know, the games that we’ve been a part of have been pretty wild and crazy. But we’ve never wavered and we never stopped believing. And it started with our head coach (Sean McVay) and the leaders on this team, with a ‘just one play at a time’ mindset and staying in the moment, especially for us older guys. We know how hard it is to get here, right? This is my first time, and it took me 15 years to get here. So we just don’t want to miss this opportunity or not do whatever you can to make the most of it.

“And,” he added, “we sure did.”

If guys like Weddle and Donald felt like they had an interminable wait, what about all of those old-school Rams fans, the ones who signed petitions and stared Facebook pages and believed they could will the team to return from St. Louis, even when few others believed.

If they were of a certain age, surely they remembered all of those heartbreaks of years gone by. They grieve that the Fearsome Foursome, that great defensive line featuring Hall of Famers Deacon Jones and Merlin Olsen, never had a shot at playing for a championship. They remember that 1974 NFC championship game in Minnesota when Hall of Fame guard Tom Mack was called for a false start with the ball at the Vikings’ 1-yard line – and anyone who watched the play knows that Mack didn’t move a muscle.

They remember all of those losses in those frigid Minnesota Decembers, and the year they finally got the Vikings at home only to have it rain so much the Coliseum turned into a mud bog. They remember that first Super Bowl, at the Rose Bowl against Pittsburgh, when Nolan Cromwell had what could have been a game-securing interception in his hands but couldn’t hold it. They remember those ’80s teams that kept getting to the summit and being pushed back, and they remember the phantom sack that changed the perception of Jim Everett’s career against the 49ers in the 1989 season.

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And they remember that evening in Atlanta three years ago, when the Rams were held without a touchdown and McVay was outcoached by the master, New England’s Bill Belichick.

Rams fans, if you remember all of that, I think you can push it to the recesses of your memory now. Savor this one for a good, long while.

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