And now ... Da Prediction

 I know what I'm going to be looking at, come 10:30 or so tomorrow night. And if there's any queso left, I may decorate the wall with it.

My Foo'ball Exper-tease and ex-sportswriter skillz tell me I'm going to be seeing Rams owner Stan Kroenke grinning like a raccoon while he leaves his grimy paw prints all over the Lombardi Trophy.

"Gee, Mr. Blob, can we deduce from this you don't care much for Mr. Kroenke?" you're saying now.

Yes, you can deduce that. I do not like Mr. Kroenke, and it's not really because he carpetbagged the Rams out of St. Louis and took them back to L.A. with the NFL's blessing. It's that he felt compelled to trash the city of St. Louis on his way out of town.

That was as low class as low class gets. So to hell with him. And to hell with the Rams, even if reason tells me they're going to win the Big Roman Numeral tomorrow.

They'll win because they've put together a Superfriends team with a quarterback (Matt Stafford) they freed from the Lions gulag, and the most feared pass rush in professional football. And they'll be going up against the Cincinnati Bengals, who have one of the worst offensive lines in the league.

This is not a good matchup, the Exper-tease tells me. And so as wondrous Joe Burrow is for the Yipes Stripes, I fear he's doomed to be sacked eleventy-hundred times tomorrow. If Von Miller doesn't get him, Aaron Donald will.

And so the head tells me the Rams win, like, 27-17.

The heart, however, tells me the Bengals have them right where they want them.

Which is, right where they had the AFC's top seed, Tennessee, in the divisional round. And right where they had Kansas City, the prohibitive favorite to win it all, in the AFC title game.

In the former, Burrow was sacked nine times and yet somehow got the Bengals close enough for Evan McPherson to win it with a field goal at the gun, 19-16.In the latter, they got down 21-3 and then shut down the Un-shuttable One, Patrick Mahomes, limiting the Chiefs to a field goal in the second half.

Then McPherson came on again in overtime to finish 'em off, 27-24.

Now they're on the road again, sort of, playing the Rams in the Rams home digs, SoFi Stadium. And they still have Burrow and McPherson and that defense, and also LaMarr Chase and Tee Higgins. So, you know, maybe ...

Maybe Burrow gets sacked and sacked and keeps getting up to throw lasers. Maybe the Rams focus on taking Chase away, and Higgins has another huge day like he did in Arrowhead, when he caught six passes for 103 yards. Maybe Joe Cool II pulls off the same sort of upset Joe Cool I -- last name, Namath -- did in Super Bowl III.

Of course, this time, McPherson gets the winner in overtime. 

In my dreams, that's how I see it going. And you know what?

I kinda like my dreams.

Bengals 27. Rams 24.