The Rams go into Super Bowl LVI on Sunday at SoFi Stadium knowing this is the time and place to end the most galling shutout in Los Angeles professional sports history.

The early Super Bowl-era Rams of Merlin Olsen, Deacon Jones, Roman Gabriel and George Allen came up short. Their 1970s successors, with Jack Youngblood, Vince Ferragamo and Chuck Knox, couldn’t get it done. The ’80s teams led by Eric Dickerson, Jackie Slater and John Robinson never got there. The new century brought the franchise back from St. Louis, with Aaron Donald and Todd Gurley and soon Sean McVay, but also brought frustration home.

There had been an L.A. Rams championship in the pre-Super Bowl days of 1951, and a St. Louis Rams Super Bowl championship in the 1999 season, but still has never been an L.A. Rams Super Bowl championship.

Now it should finally happen.

For the first time in the L.A. Rams’ three Super Bowls, they’re favored to win the game, four-point choices over the Cincinnati Bengals in Las Vegas betting.

Playing on their home field at SoFi Stadium only adds to the expectations. The Bengals are officially the home team, even though they’ve never been to the two-year-old Inglewood venue before. But the Rams get to dress in their regular-season locker room and line up on the familiar eastern sideline.

Unlike the 1979 season, when they lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and 2018, when they were stopped by the New England Patriots, they have the edge in experience and 36-year-old Rams coach McVay gets to feel like the elder statesman as he coaches his second Super Bowl against the Bengals’ first-timer Zac Taylor.

And as many Hall of Famers, Most Valuable Players, All-Pros, Pro Bowlers and great coaches as the Rams’ teams of decades past had, they don’t match the star power of this one led by quarterback Matthew Stafford.

As history shows, getting to the Super Bowl wasn’t guaranteed, and winning it certainly isn’t.

“You look throughout NFL history, there’s been a lot of great teams in a lot of places where it blows your mind that they didn’t win together,” Andrew Whitworth, the 40-year-old left tackle, said when he was asked about trying to break the string of L.A. Rams disappointments.

“The truth is you can put a lot of great players together, and it doesn’t mean they’re going to win, it doesn’t mean they’re going to make the plays at the exact moment that they need to. That’s why you can’t put ‘super teams’ together in the NFL, because it doesn’t work like that.

“I think that’s one of the things that you felt accomplished about (this season). Regardless of whether people thought we added all these guys, they still had to perform, and we still had to go make those plays.”

Safety Eric Weddle, 37, grew up in Alta Loma and is the only current Rams player who saw the team in L.A. before the 1995 move to St. Louis. Weddle remembers his dad burning his Rams gear when they left. He knows what it would mean to win the Super Bowl.

“Oh, my gosh, it would be incredible,” Weddle said. “We all know the history, and we’re trying to bring L.A. (a title) and bring all the fans back.

“To be the team, the guys, the core group, to bring ‘em back and bring a Super Bowl (victory) here. Listen, we’ll be etched in history.”

The Bengals are dangerous underdogs, having risen from 4-11-1 in 2020 to 10-7 and the AFC North title in 2021 before beating the Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs.

The improvement came with quarterback Joe Burrow healthy in his second season and connecting for 1,400 yards to former LSU teammate Ja’Marr Chase, the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.

If the Rams can contain Bengals running back Joe Mixon, they can press their biggest advantage, the pass rush led by Donald and linebackers Von Miller and Leonard Floyd against an offensive line that gave up a league-high 55 sacks in the regular season and nine in the playoff win over Tennessee. But Burrow is tough. And he can escape.

On offense, Stafford and NFL Offensive Player of the Year Cooper Kupp try to cap their greatest individual seasons against a Bengals defense that ranks below league average in stopping the pass.

But the Rams will have to weather the loss of tight end Tyler Higbee to a knee injury, and need better than they’ve been getting from the running game since Cam Akers’ return from injured reserve.

Higbee’s injury leaves Donald, Whitworth, right tackle Ron Havenstein and punter Johnny Hekker as the only members of the first unit in the Super Bowl LIII loss to New England who will suit up for Super Bowl LVI. Kupp was injured and missed the last Super Bowl. Wide receiver Robert Woods played in that one and is hurt now.

The Rams wouldn’t be in the Super Bowl without their roster’s many major changes, from trading for Pro Bowl cornerback Jalen Ramsey in October 2019, to trading quarterback Jared Goff to acquire Stafford in January 2021, to the midseason pickups of Miller and wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.

But they might not feel the drive to get it done if they didn’t see Donald and others every day, the latest great Rams seeking the validation of a Super Bowl ring.

“When you have something bigger than yourself to play for and motivation that drives you, what a powerful thing that is,” said McVay, who’s coaching in his second Super Bowl in five years in charge. “It’s why I want to try to work as hard as I can within the framework of my role, because you want to see Aaron, you want to see the Whitworths, the Weddles, the Staffords, the Jalen Ramseys, you want to see all these guys that are so great for our team be able to achieve that success and be able to finish this deal.”

And one other Super Bowl championship-starved star: L.A.

The city has celebrated Dodgers World Series wins, Lakers NBA titles and Kings Stanley Cups. The L.A. Raiders won a Super Bowl in 1984. But the L.A. Rams, not yet.

“I think L.A. is a city of champions, a city of winners, and I think that’s something our players embrace and love,” McVay said. “Continuing to play at a consistent level and present this fan base with championship-level play week in and week out is what our guys have delivered on, and we’ve got one more to try to finish the deal.”

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Beckham, a Ram since November, said he knows.

“I think we all understand the task at hand,” Beckham said. “Just seeing the excitement around town, everything that’s coming with it, and how badly Los Angeles deserves this. I know it would mean a lot.

“We’ve got to find a way to get it done.”