St. Louis Rams history

* The Cleveland Rams were a founding franchise of the American Football League in 1936.

They moved to the National Football League in 1937.

In 1946 Strode and Washington signed with the Los Angeles Rams, thus (along with two others) integrating professional football in the United States.

They won four NFL Western division championships in seven years and captured their second NFL title in 1951.

Topped by a crowd of 102,368 for a San Francisco 49ers game in 1957, turnouts in the Coliseum topped 80,000 on 22 occasions during the Rams' first 20 years in Los Angeles.

The 1979 Rams won the NFC championship before losing to Pittsburgh 31-19 in Super Bowl XIV.

The Rams' relocation to St Louis gave the city a professional football team for the first time since the end of the 1987 season.

Their first game in St Louis against the New Orleans Saints was played on September 10, 1995, with the Rams winning 17–13.

In 1997, the Rams hired former Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil.

The Rams’ initial seasons in St Louis were inauspicious, as their victory total declined in each of their first four years in their new home, culminating in a dismal 1998 campaign that saw the team go 4–12.

Two years later, in 1999, the Rams were transformed into Super Bowl champions.

The Rams continued to be one of the highest-scoring teams in the league through the first years of the 21st century and returned once more to the Super Bowl in 2002 but lost to the New England Patriots.

In 2010, Kroenke exercised his right of first refusal to buy the remaining interest in the St Louis Rams from the estate of late owner Georgia Frontiere.

In the summer of 2012, league executive Chris Hardart came to the city amid a dispute between the Rams and local leaders over upgrades to the Edward Jones Dome and found business community leaders “energized” and meetings productive.

But in February 2013, arbitrators ruled in favor of Rams’ $700 million proposal to make the Edward Jones Dome a first-tier NFL facility, and on July 3, local leaders gave official notice they weren’t going to pony up.

Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown was the only vote against any relocation to Los Angeles and was outspoken about it: “There’s nothing wrong with the markets where these teams play now,” he said at a meeting in 2015.

Despite the state’s offer of $400 million in stadium financing—the fifth most in NFL history at the time—Kroenke applied for relocation to the Los Angeles area, and the team’s move was approved by NFL owners in January 2016.

The Rams posted a 13–3 record in 2018, which was tied for the best mark in the NFL that season.

In this July 23, 2019, file photo, Mike Brown, owner of the Cincinnati Bengals NFL football team, is interviewed at Paul Brown Stadium. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Before the 2021 season, the Rams traded for veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford and then acquired two star players (defensive lineman Von Miller and wide receiver Odell Beckham, Jr.) during the season.