INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Confetti rained down from the ceiling at SoFi Stadium, tears poured down Aaron Donald’s cheeks, and for once — finally — they represented the same thing.

The Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl on Sunday night, beating the Cincinnati Bengals, 23-20, in the chaos and the catalysts that have marked their entire season since the day they traded for quarterback Matthew Stafford last January.

Stafford, previously without a championship in his 13-year career, orchestrated his 43rd game-winning drive to get one — after throwing two interceptions, losing another lead receiver to injury and getting a painful ankle twist re-taped mid-game.

Cooper Kupp, the Rams’ former third-round pick and their Triple Crown receiver, was named MVP after a two-touchdown performance and was Stafford’s featured target on their go-ahead scoring drive in the fourth quarter. Kupp pulled in a 1-yard touchdown catch at the end of that drive, which featured four penalties all within the 8-yard line and all within rapid sequence of one another — including a foul for a brutal shot Kupp took from Bengals safety Vonn Bell. Kupp fell flat on the field for a moment before peeling himself off the turf to line up again; Stafford went right back to him on the next play, and then the touchdown.

And Donald — with questions swirling around his future in the NFL and nothing more to accomplish in it but getting a Super Bowl ring around his finger and his young daughter a handful of that confetti, because she didn’t get to play in it when the Rams lost Super Bowl LIII — sealed the game with his fourth-down hit on Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow that forced an incomplete pass. Postgame, Donald took the podium with his three children — his daughter beaming and clutching that confetti tightly in her hand. In Donald’s mind, the game couldn’t have been sealed in any other way — and head coach Sean McVay knew it.

“When it was a fourth down, you could see that they got into the shotgun and they were probably not going to run the football, I said, ‘Aaron is going to close the game out right here,” McVay said. “He is the effing man.”

As Sunday’s game unfolded, the Rams’ problems mounted. As they fell into a seven-point third-quarter deficit, they didn’t have top receiver Odell Beckham Jr., because he left the first half in heartbreaking fashion with a knee injury, crumpling to the ground as he grabbed at his leg on a non-contact play. Friendly target Tyler Higbee went on injured reserve this week and the Rams have been without No. 2 receiver Robert Woods for months. By the third quarter, the receivers group consisted of Kupp, second-year receiver Van Jefferson, third-string tight end Brycen Hopkins (who had a crucial third-down conversion within his four-catch, 47-yard night), seventh-round pick Ben Skowronek and Darrell Henderson, who just came off injured reserve.

The Bengals smartly made stopping Kupp their mission, and despite having three healthy running backs in Sony Michel, Cam Akers and Henderson, the Rams had no run game throughout the entirety of Sunday’s game. As they kept forcing the run, Cincinnati’s defense lived in the Rams’ backfield. By the start of the Rams’ final drive, they had allowed nine negative plays, six of them against the run. The longest run of the night, in fact, was a tough-churned 8-yard carry by Akers into the red zone on that drive — but prior, the shadows of the Rams’ lost Super Bowl three years ago crept into the edges of the night. The Rams lacked dimension and couldn’t adjust to find it again.

But finally — finally — McVay pivoted. Stafford threw 14 passes on the Rams’ final drive (three were nullified due to penalties), including a 22-yard slice to Kupp on a long second down.

“Matthew and Cooper made the most of their opportunities in the most critical times,” said McVay postgame. “Lot of trust in (Matthew). You want to put the game in your best players’ hands, the guy that you feel has led you (to) this position …

“You said, ‘Let’s not bang our head against the wall again. … You put the ball in your best players’ hands when it matters the most. That’s what we did with Matthew. He delivered in a big way, and he’s a world champ.”

It wasn’t just that the Rams pivoted, it wasn’t just that their defense held the dam and gave their offense an opportunity to gather itself for a final attack.

It was also that they could.

In 2019, McVay didn’t have the answers for the problems that presented themselves in real time — whether by his own inflexibility or ability to adjust the offensive system that was so lauded entering the game. He, they, were getting solved.

But the Rams had won a lot of games — enough to get to a championship in McVay’s second year as head coach — and he, general manager Les Snead and chief operating officer Kevin Demoff believed they’d broken through. And that meant it was time to push harder. In McVay’s mind, that meant building in ways to be “right”, even when things went wrong.

“I think when you break through, at that point, there is your window,” Snead told The Athletic earlier this month. “What are you going to do with it, how are you going to take advantage of it? How can you make it last, how can you make the most of it? The math says you should probably start thinking a little bit differently than the other 31 (teams) about the bets you make once you get there”

The expectations for a sports franchise in a city that is also home to consistent championship contenders in the Lakers and the Dodgers compounded their urgency.

“It started with Stan’s challenge to us,” said Demoff, of Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke — who was on hand at SoFi Stadium on Sunday night to watch his team win its first championship in Los Angeles. “To win quickly, but also to build in a way that is unique to Los Angeles. … Stan’s challenge to us was, ‘(the strategy) doesn’t have to be the same. But you know what it looks like.’”

The Rams had explored a version of their current team-build before Super Bowl LIII, with trades and veteran player acquisitions that included outside linebacker Dante Fowler, defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh and cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib.

Over the previous three years especially, the Rams have traded the first-round draft picks — which they believe have decreased in value because they’re winning and perennially picking later in that round — for proven top-tier players. Making those trades work has required an overhaul of their draft process which focuses on traits that are complementary to the abilities of their “core” players, and maximizing their chances of picking a player in the middle rounds who can contribute immediately (he may also do so because of those traits; the Rams aren’t asking him to be a complete player but instead do a specific thing well as it pertains to their scheme and the players around him). They also must have coaches who can develop those players (the Rams have 33 “homegrown” players on their roster; sixth-most in the NFL) into early starters or important contributors to balance out the financial hit and draft capital the “core” players require. All phases of this ecosystem are wholly interdependent; if one part lapses, the entire thing crumbles.

Yet since they lost Super Bowl LIII to the Patriots, Snead, Demoff and McVay began to push against the previously perceived limits of their build.

In 2019, the Rams sent multiple first-round picks to Jacksonville for cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who immediately became a core piece of their roster around whom they re-built their secondary and even part of their draft model. Ramsey’s ability to play multiple roles in their defense, when coupled with Donald’s own elite set of traits, meant that the Rams could eliminate certain traits in prospects in the draft process and, they believed, better identify the “right” prospects to complement Ramsey and Donald — a necessity when picking most frequently in the middle rounds.

They also brought in coordinator Brandon Staley in 2020. McVay coveted the same defensive system that had so thoroughly solved his offense on multiple occasions during the 2018 season, and concepts of which Patriots coach Bill Belichick installed in just two weeks of preparation for the Rams in order to beat them. Staley was himself an offshoot of that system, who could also teach it and connect with players — traits McVay also sought out in part because the Rams would have to themselves install the new scheme over a two-week period as the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered their facilities and reduced on-field work to mere days ahead of the 2020 season.

McVay and Staley introduced highly competitive live periods through their truncated “training camp” practices. In them, the defense became something more than it was before, within its new two-high shells, multiple, savvy and assertive secondary rotations and mad-scientist pass-rush plan. Startling to McVay, though, was the realization during that time that the offense would stay where it was. The same league-shifting system that McVay and former first-round pick Jared Goff employed to lead the Rams to their initial Super Bowl run, was solved.

Worse in the mind of McVay, it couldn’t evolve past a ceiling that would never again be as high. To him, there were no more answers left unless he created his own.

So last January, McVay called Kroenke and asked him to approve a trade for Stafford, with whom he’d just so happened to run into that week in Cabo. Stafford wanted to be traded from Detroit, where he’d spent the first 12 years of his career without a postseason win. McVay was drawn to Stafford’s analysis of defenses, his arm angles and ability to work out of structure and his cool sociopathy as it pertained to punishing opposing defenses in high-pressure moments. He and Snead believed their already-delicate ecosystem could handle the draft pick haul it would take to get Stafford. So the Rams made another blockbuster move, sending 2022 and 2023 first-round picks, a 2021 third-round pick and Goff to Detroit for Stafford.

This season, McVay and Stafford spread out the offense and made the passing game more multiple by building in aggressive dropback and shotgun concepts, to balance with the play-action on which McVay and Goff had previously become almost totally dependent. Kupp was empowered to add his own wrinkles and twists to the scheme and McVay even sat back on some days to let Kupp, receiver Robert Woods and Stafford troubleshoot out the passing game to see what they could discover. The Rams offense again jumped to the front of the league in explosiveness and yards (even as their run game struggled to find dimension without Akers). Stafford led MVP conversations as the Rams hardly hit bumps through September and October.

In November, the Rams’ brass pushed again. They learned that Broncos star outside linebacker Von Miller was available for trade, and they wanted to inject more menace into their pass-rush with Donald acquiring so much attention from opposing offensive linemen and coordinators. Broncos general manager George Paton wanted to ensure that if they did move on, Miller would go to a contender. Just ahead of the 2021 trade deadline, the Rams sent their 2022-23 second-round picks to Denver, who in turn absorbed most of Miller’s $9 million salary.

Months later, the Rams finished the regular season ranked No. 1 in pass-rush and run-stop win rate. Miller was graded as the top pass-rusher in the postseason, according to Pro Football Focus, with Donald just a couple of spots behind him on the list. Sunday, he had two sacks and two tackles for loss (Donald also had two sacks).

The Rams agreed to terms with Beckham just 10 days after their trade for Miller, following a player-led movement to bring him in. The next day, Woods tore his ACL and heartbreak flooded through the locker room. They lost their next three games as they scrambled to re-assign Woods’ substantial responsibilities in their offense to multiple receivers, many of whom were relatively inexperienced. Stafford turned the ball over too often through that span; he threw pick-sixes in all three losses. In an adjustment that may have saved the Rams’ season, McVay and the coaching staff overhauled their wilted run game to feature Michel — another veteran acquisition in exchange for draft picks — and his pounding, downhill running style. In doing so, the Rams re-discovered a heartbeat of sorts; a steadiness that balanced their offense and helped them put together a five-game winning streak.

Without both starting safeties as the postseason began, the Rams coaxed 37-year-old safety Eric Weddle out of retirement believing he’d at most be a good set of eyes on the sideline, and help in situational subpackages.

But Sunday, Weddle called their defensive signals in a system that first-year defensive coordinator Raheem Morris told him was “built for him”, and in doing so did not come off the field even after clearly badly injuring his shoulder. As the Bengals fought to close out the Rams after scoring 10 unanswered points in the third quarter, Weddle’s voice and Morris’ calls ordered the counterpunches.

Stafford — what more can be said? Stafford can create his own chaos, sure — he turned the ball over twice, including an interception in the third quarter immediately after Burrow hit Tee Higgins for a 75-yard touchdown against Ramsey (the officials missed Higgins’ tug on Ramsey’s facemask on the play). But Stafford also played the best fourth-quarter football of any quarterback in the NFL this postseason, and he did so again on Sunday. His touchdown pass to Kupp couldn’t have happened without his most dangerous throw of the day: The 22-yard pass that knifed through heavy Bengals traffic and didn’t so much as settle into Kupp’s arms as it did collide.

“When you look at the way the second half started, a lot of teams would’ve folded,” McVay said.

But they didn’t — not the “big names” about whom much was made throughout the year, not the young players thrust into the pressure of this moment and what the team needed from them, begged from them even without being sure they could get it done.

Something else — something intangible — truly helped the Rams get through the postseason. A quality began to manifest within the Rams’ build was the willingness new players showed not just to enter the team’s culture, but to help shape it and wholly become a part of it. Core players such as veteran left tackle Andrew Whitworth, Kupp, Donald and Ramsey set a foundation that newer additions were eager to push forward.

Miller has uniquely elevated Donald in a way only he could. For weeks, Miller has talked to Donald about what it feels like to hold the Lombardi Trophy in his arms, and how a person’s life changes afterward.

Sunday, it wasn’t just Donald who muscled the Rams back into the game in the second half, it was Miller and his third and fourth-quarter sacks, too, that helped the Rams’ pressure-rate mount to a Super Bowl-record 40 percent in the second half.

Beckham has emerged as a crucial piece in the Rams offense, and caught the first touchdown of the Super Bowl in the first quarter (he had 52 yards on two catches before he got hurt).

But Beckham, who has expressed his wishes to remain in Los Angeles for the long-term, has now become a part of the Rams’ emotional fabric, too. As he wept in the locker room at halftime after teammates had filed back onto the field, Woods — the very player whose absence Beckham has been trying to fill — held him tightly and said to him, “I am right with you. I will be here every step, every rehab, every day.”

The Rams couldn’t know this level of depth in their culture would be a product of the risky, at times eyebrow-raising moves that forced the balance of their ecosystem to its limits. In bringing those catalysts upon themselves, though, they found more answers than they realized they needed.

“I’m just really pleased to be associated with a group that is not afraid to shoot their shot — take chances on things that we feel like is in the best interest of the football team,” said McVay. “There’s a lot of rolled eyes at us. But we believe in those things.”

In the most crucial moments of their most crucial game, taking those chances mattered.

Three years ago in Atlanta, the Rams imploded; folded in a bewildered spiral. On Sunday night, they pushed back — as one, because that is what they have become.

With six minutes left in the Super Bowl, they showed McVay the answers he sought. He let them. Finally, they came unstuck.

In the end, a game so tightly fought and closely won came down to a group of people who built something together, through dramatic change and yes, chaos, and catalysts too. They created solutions, and asked more questions. They found themselves, and each other, and their bond grew deeper the higher the stakes rose.

Pressure, Rams players and coaches like to say, is a privilege. Out of that which they placed upon themselves, and as the blue-and-yellow confetti fell all around them, it was clear to see what grew.

“I just can’t say enough about how much I love this group,” McVay said. “They play for one another. There is something really powerful about being a part of something bigger than yourself, and you could see that the way these guys competed. Love these players, love these coaches.

“They’re world champs.”