With the Rams playing in the Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium, this should be a happy time for Robert Woods, the Gardena-born wide receiver who starred at Serra High and USC.

But Woods is mourning the sudden death last month at age 66 of his father, also named Robert Woods, a receiver for Grambling and two NFL teams in the 1970s.

And he has spent the past three months fighting conflicting feelings as the Rams have marched toward Super Bowl LVI against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday while Woods is sidelined by a knee injury.

Those emotions came together when Woods, in street clothes, tearfully embraced wide receiver Cooper Kupp and greeted teammates on the field after the Rams’ victory over the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC championship game on Jan. 30.

“I was emotional for my pops, and I was like, ‘Congratulations, guys,’ and they’re all just, ‘Come here, bro, we’re not worried about that,’” Woods said Tuesday evening via Zoom.

Woods said Rams players and coaches have been “there for me.”

“There’s so much going on with the football and the championship and the Super Bowl, but I felt like they included me, and I felt like that moment was the definition of that right there,” he said.

If the Rams win the Super Bowl, Woods will have earned his ring.

That’s not only for his contributions on the field, where he caught 45 passes for 556 yards and four touchdowns, and carried the ball eight times for 46 yards and another touchdown, in nine games before he tore an ACL in practice in mid-November.

It’s also for his contributions since the injury, when he has watched every game at SoFi Stadium from an unfamiliar “bird’s-eye view” and passed along observations to receivers Kupp, Odell Beckham Jr., Van Jefferson and Ben Skowronek.

“It’s a nice view, but I’d rather be on the field for sure,” Woods said.

Kupp said he looks forward to seeing Woods most mornings as he goes through rehabilitation at the Rams’ training facility in Thousand Oaks.

“You know the type of player he is, you know the intensity, the mindset that he brings and he sets the standard for. He calls everyone up to such a high standard of football play, the selflessness that he embodies,” Kupp said.

“As he’s gone through this rehab, just being able to share things that he’s seeing from his perspective when he’s watching games (or) practice, that speaks volumes about the type of person he is and how much he cares about the guys in this room.”

Kupp has talked about the clashing emotions he felt when his own knee injury in 2018 kept him out of the Rams’ previous Super Bowl run. He cheered for his teammates to keep winning. But it hurt not to be part of it.

Woods, who caught five passes for 70 yards in that Super Bowl, said he now relates to what Kupp went through.

But Woods said he has gotten past the negative feelings.

“I felt like recently I was able to overcome that feeling of, like, aww, man, not being a part of it,” he said. “(I’ve been) telling guys, ‘Congratulations,’ and they’re like, ‘Congratulations to you too.’ The team has been really, really big on ‘No, you’re a part of this.’”

Woods agrees with them.

“You’re right, we wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t contributed some of the plays that I helped contribute, some awesome touchdowns (and) blocking,” he said. “Yeah, I didn’t play all 17, but I’m a part of this championship team.

“Hopefully we win it. There’s going to be a stone in (that ring) for me.”

As a Southern California nwho has always played here except for the four NFL seasons he spent in Buffalo, Woods is rooting for the first Super Bowl victory by a team called the Los Angeles Rams. The franchise won the Super Bowl as the St. Louis Rams in the 1999 season.

“To me, growing up in L.A., this is Championship City,” Woods said. “Seeing the Lakers, Shaq and Kobe dominate. Seeing the Dodgers dominate. Seeing the Kings win their championships. I feel like it’s time for us. We’ve got to be part of that L.A. legacy, L.A. history.”

Woods turns 30 on April 10. He’s under contract through the 2025 season under a four-year, $65 million contract extension signed in 2020.

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He said he expects to be recovered from his knee injury in plenty of time to play at the start of the 2022 season, and “should be good” for mini-camp in the spring, but wants to be back to normal in his own pre-training-camp training before joining team workouts.

Meanwhile, he likes what he has seen of the Rams, who were 7-2 when he went down and are 8-3 since, thanks in part to the good luck of acquiring Beckham right before Woods’ injury.

“I wish I could have my mix in it, I feel like we could be real dangerous, but I feel like the guys have been stepping up really big,” Woods said.

On Sunday, Woods will be allowed on the sideline at SoFi Stadium, feeling a part of it as the Rams chase a championship.

“There’s so much joy,” he said, “it overshadows the pain.”

Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp, right, celebrates with injured wide receiver Robert Woods after they defeated the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC championship game last month at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. Woods, who grew up in Gardena and starred at Serra High and USC, will be watching from the sideline Sunday as his team tries to complete their season with a Super Bowl title. The roles were reversed the last time the team played in the Super Bowl, when an injured Kupp was unable to play in the 2018 game. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)