The freewheeling 17-game ride came to an end Sunday, the latest regularly-scheduled NFL finale in history.

At the end, everything the Rams and the Chargers knew about themselves was reinforced.

The Rams, capable of dealing with everything in the NFL except San Francisco, saw the 49ers walking down the street and turned out the lights. They lost a 17-0 lead to the team that has now beaten them six consecutive times, and lost the game 27-24 in overtime, although Arizona’s loss to Seattle still made them NFC West champions.

The Chargers, faced with an inside straight in Las Vegas, saw Justin Herbert. Which means, by definition, that they had a chance.

The Raiders turned their mistakes into a 29-14 lead with eight and a half minutes left. Herbert, operating behind an offensive line that is addressed every spring but somehow is never fixed, kept getting up and grabbing thunderbolts.

In the final two drives of the fourth quarter, the Chargers faced five fourth downs and picked up all of them, once by penalty and four times by Herbert. In overtime, after the Raiders kicked a field goal, Herbert converted another fourth down, to Mike Williams, and the Bolts got a field goal to tie it with 4:30 left.

Las Vegas ended up winning, 35-32, and the Chargers have now missed the playoffs for the 10th time in 12 years. At times they continue to show the uncanny knack of taking 2 plus 2 and winding up with 2 ½.

It’s a little thing known as Chargering. It was epitomized a few years ago when Baltimore’s Ray Rice converted a fourth-and-29 at winning time. Here, Jalen Richard ran straight up the middle to pick up a third-and-23, a bridge to a Raiders’ touchdown.

But maybe they will eventually be more famous for Herberting. The NFL sophomore threw 20 passes on 20 plays in the tying touchdown drive. He was a football celebrity when the night began, but he crossed the line and became a prime-time superhero.

It’s tough to ask one young man to take on 60 years of club history, but Herbert was bent on wiping out those transgressions by himself if he had to. The Chargers can now enter the long off-season with hope that’s based on something besides percentages.

There was a certain amount of honor, too, in the way it ended. The Raiders and Chargers could have subtly pre-arranged a tie that would have gotten both into the postseason….at which point Al Davis, John Madden and Marty Schottenheimer would have risen up and dragged Allegiant Stadium into the grave with them. Rivalries, as we saw in both locales, do matter. The Raiders preferred knocking out the Chargers to frustrating the Steelers, who would have fallen short with a LA-LV tie.

Meanwhile, the Rams will meet Arizona for the third time on Monday night, and at their third crossroads.

They were 3-0 and booking their February tickets to Disney World when Kyler Murray ran circles around the Oculus and everything else in SoFi Stadium. He kept cashing third downs, got hard running from Chase Edmunds, and the Cardinals romped to a 37-20 win.

The Rams would not play another functional team until they were 7-1, and then they lost three in succession. They were 8-4 and two games behind the Cardinals when they went to Glendale for a Monday Night game, and on that morning they discovered Tyler Higbee and Jalen Ramsey were ineligible. But Aaron Donald and Leonard Floyd punched first, and Matthew Stafford was outstanding as the Rams won 30-23.

The Rams then proved they had compensated for the loss of Robert Woods and straightened out their defense, all the way up to the 17th game.

On Sunday they ran into their big brothers from San Francisco, who walloped their way back into the game and won it in overtime. With a win, the Rams would have played host to the gallant but crippled Saints this weekend.

Much will be, and has been, made about Sean McVay’s empty-backfield call on third and one that allowed San Francisco to sack Stafford and start the turnaround. That might be stretching the difference between correlation and causation, but the Rams never really tried to run on Sunday. With another week for Cam Akers to get situated, that might be worth considering on Monday.

Styles make fights, and the Rams should have enough diversity and star power to match up with any team that doesn’t wear gold trousers and red tops. Perhaps the Cardinals should find some.

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