Why are the Rams preparing for revenge on the Seahawks?

chicago — The Chicago Bears weren’t the only ones who had a pattern this season.

The Rams had one, too.

While Chicago piled up storybook endings, the Rams failed to finish what they started with alarming regularity.

Five losses. Five whiffs.

Remember the unsatisfying finale of “The Sopranos”? Swelling upward…then suddenly cutting to black? That was the Rams. Running out of gas. Of the answers.

“All of our losses were our own making,” star defensive tackle Jared Fiers said.

Two weeks out of the playoffs, the Rams have turned a corner. Suddenly, they shut down the games.

There were certainly flaws in their 20-17 overtime win over Chicago on Sunday night, just as their three-point win over Carolina had their wild warts.

The point is, when the Rams needed to deliver the knockout blow, they delivered.

That’s where they want to be heading into the NFC Championship game in Seattle, where last month they blew a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter and ended up losing in overtime.

Seismologists are on standby. That’s how high the Lumen Field level is. The ground may be shaking in Seattle, but the Rams won’t be.

“We don’t think too much about that last play,” Rams safety Cam Corll said. “[Seattle] He got lucky and won it in the end. “I feel like we’re the better team.”

Then he admitted, “It’s going to be a tough fight.”

In football vernacular, Curl was a Doug Sunday night, coming up with a big interception of Caleb Williams in overtime and setting up the game-winning field goal drive.

That undid the near-supernatural heroics of the Bears, who have won games with fourth-quarter comebacks seven times this season, more than any other team. Williams’ decline at the end of the list, when he fell from 14th to 40th place – Forty! – And somehow Cole Kmet was found in the end zone and will live on in Chicago sports lore.

However, on a very cold night, amid the swirling snow, these rams were ordered by fate to go for a walk.

The downtime this season, and the frustration of losing those close games, “has given us the experience and confidence” to turn on the afterburners now, Rams safety Quentin Lake said.

“We know what it takes to never feel like this again,” he said. “The only team that beats the Rams is the Rams, just put it that way.”

Among the cool, majestic bodies of water in Chicago on Sunday: Lake Michigan and Lake Quentin.

In the fourth quarter, with the Bears within two yards of scoring, Lake caught leaping running back D’Andre Swift in the air and planted him in the turf for no gain. It was a key game in a goal line situation that stole all the oxygen from the crowd.

“I had to channel my inner Lake Carnell on that one,” he said of his father, the legendary UCLA and Pittsburgh Steelers defensive back.

This wasn’t the only direction the Rams made. They converted a fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter by handing the ball off to receiver Puka Nacua, a play reminiscent of a jet sweep to Cooper Kupp in a similar situation in the Super Bowl.

Their win in Chicago was similar to their win in Tampa Bay four years ago, when they went on to lift the Lombardi Trophy. In that 30-27 victory over the Buccaneers, the Rams similarly responded to a punch in the gut near the end — a Tampa Bay touchdown to tie the game — and then marched 62 yards in the final 42 seconds and won it with a field goal.

Like the Rams this season, there were all kinds of red flags in the regular season for this team. These Rams didn’t win a game in November, and then they got hot.

This path to the Super Bowl is woven into the fabric of great moments in Los Angeles sports. The Rams beat the Buccaneers, then took down San Francisco in the conference title game at SoFi Stadium before winning it all against Cincinnati at the same stadium.

Now, another showdown with a division rival for a trip to the Super Bowl.

Speaking of flashbacks, three of the four possible Super Bowl matchups are rematches: Rams-New England, Seattle-New England, and Seattle-Denver.

There’s a lot of respect between the Rams and Seahawks, and — at least from the Rams in the locker room Sunday night — a feeling that this game was a foregone conclusion.

“Something about that moment when we lost that game [in Seattle] “I felt like we were going to be back here,” defensive lineman Coby Turner said. “And honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

So, after throwing fate upside down in Chicago, the Rams are cool with him again. They were freezing under the pressure. On Sunday, somehow, they melted away.