The Rams will host the Denver Broncos – and Matthew Stafford will duel with Russell Wilson – in a Christmas Day game, the NFL has announced.
The 1:30 p.m. game at SoFi Stadium (shown on CBS) will be one of three NFL games on Sunday, Dec. 25, while most games in Week 16 will be played Saturday.
It will be the first time the Rams have ever played on Christmas Day.
The matchup is anticipated in part because of the quarterbacks. Stafford led the Rams to a Super Bowl championship in his first season with the team after being acquired in a trade with the Detroit Lions. Wilson hopes to do the same for the Broncos after they acquired him from the Seattle Seahawks in a March trade involving three other players and six draft picks.
This is the first date to be announced for any of the Rams’ 17 regular-season games in 2022.
The NFL is having TV networks announce sites and dates for some “select” games before the league releases the full schedule on Thursday at 5 p.m. PT.
As Super Bowl champions, the Rams will host the regular-season opener at SoFi Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 8 against an opponent to be revealed.
Under the NFL’s schedule rotation, the Rams face the NFC South and AFC West as well as the NFC West, plus fellow first-place teams from the NFC North and East and AFC East.
The Rams’ nine home opponents, in addition to Denver, will be Arizona, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Carolina, Las Vegas, Dallas and Buffalo. Their eight road games will be at Arizona, San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, the Chargers, Kansas City and Green Bay.
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Their schedule is rated the toughest in the league based on those opponents’ combined 2021 regular-season win percentage (.567).
But it’s easier than recent years in another respect: The Rams have only one trip to the East Coast (to Tampa Bay), after having three in the 2021 regular season and five in 2020. And they have no international trip, the 49ers having been chosen as the Cardinals’ opponent for a game in Mexico City following speculation it would be the Rams.
Thanks to the away game against the Chargers, they also get to play 10 of their 17 games in their home venue.