Andrew Whitworth is 37 years old, in his 13th season, and before this season, the Rams left tackle had never won a playoff game. He was 0-for-7 until the Rams beat the Cowboys and then the Saints to reach the Super Bowl.
So don’t try telling Whitworth the Rams didn’t win fair and square.
The three-time Pro Bowler appears weary of the bellyaching over the missed interference penalty on teammate Nickell Robey-Coleman late in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game.
“You see the arguments from some of the Saints’ players about the rule about the commissioner restarting the game over or from that point or whatever,” Whitworth told Rich Eisen, via Turf Show Times. “My argument to that would be, Rich, is then Jared Goff got a facemask on the second down on the possession before that was not called. That’d be first-and-goal at the 1 down three points. If you look at our odds from the 1 this season, that’s seven points. So, they’d be down four, and a field goal wouldn’t matter. They would have had to score in that situation either way.
“So, the reality is, where is the last foul that you want to argue? Whether it’s blatant or not is not a matter. It’s whether it’s a foul. So, it’s just one of those things that’s a slippery slope, and it’s an excuse. [However] you cut it. And the reality is they got football after that snap. They played in overtime with the football. New England had the same situation and won the game. They didn’t score; we did.
“We can argue about it all day, but they had an opportunity to win the game, and we won it.”