INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The Los Angeles Rams recognize that there are many ways to win in the modern N.F.L., but that every year 31 of them are wrong. The only methodology conclusively proven to work belongs to the team hugging and crying beneath cascading confetti after the season’s final game. On Sunday night, that falling royal blue and yellow confetti validated the Rams’ iconoclastic team-building approach that upended a hidebound league.
Los Angeles hired the youngest coach in N.F.L. history. Instead of hoping first-round picks would become stars, the team traded them to acquire stars. The Rams dealt a quarterback who had played in a Super Bowl — because they did not think Jared Goff could lead them to another — for one, Matthew Stafford, who had been in the N.