Not many players get to go out on top, especially star players. It’s what Travis Kelce had hoped for in February. It’s what guys like John Elway, Peyton Manning, Ray Lewis, and Jerome Bettis were able to do against all odds. Another name on that list is Andrew Whitworth, who retired after 16 seasons following his Super Bowl win with the Los Angeles Rams in 2021. But believe it or not, Whitworth was not a happy camper when he first arrived in L.A.
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He had spent his first 11 seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals. In the final three years of his deal from 2014 to 2016, Whitworth earned two Pro Bowl nods as well as First-Team All-Pro and Second-Team All-Pro recognition. And yet, they let him walk in the 2017 offseason, which didn’t sit well with the loyal Whitworth. He ended up signing with the Rams, earning First-Team All-Pro honors for them in his first year in 2017.
He went on to spend his final five seasons in L.A., capping it off with that Super Bowl triumph. Today, four years after his retirement, he’s a major player in the NFL media industry. He’s part of Amazon Prime’s NFL coverage, and runs a podcast with buddy Ryan Fitzpatrick. He recently reminisced about the ominous conditions of his first flight to LA LA Land following his departure from Cincinnati.
“The last flight out of Cincinnati, the back row of the airplane, we’re in the dead last row of the airplane. It was a winter storm and we had to connect through Salt Lake City, I’m sitting in the back of this plane, it was one of those where the flight attendants can’t even get up,” he recalled.
“I’m bouncing around all over the place, I’m miserable, I’m like, ‘What am I doing with my life? Why did I agree to this contract?’ I’m pissed at Cincinnati.”
However, Whitworth is not one to wallow. He was going through all the reasons why he might be angry or feel aggrieved by the characteristic penny-pinching of Cincinnati ownership, but then he snapped out of it just as quickly. He focused on his situation and accepted the negatives (the Rams were awful back then) while celebrating the positives (he could change the culture of a losing franchise).
“All of a sudden I look at [my wife] Melissa and I say, ‘Babe, we are going to L.A. and we are going to change the culture of this place, but we will never have a chance to win a Super Bowl, we will never have a chance to win,” Whitworth added.
“You gotta realize how bad they’ve been. But what we might do, is change this place enough to where these guys love what they do. Instill confidence in who they are and the culture they have.'”
In 2017, Whitworth wasn’t the only newcomer for the Rams—who were coming off a decade of losing seasons—as head coach Sean McVay also entered the fold that offseason. In their first year together, they won the NFC West with an 11-5 record, losing to the Atlanta Falcons in the Wild Card round.
Whitworth’s wife shared the plane story with McVay after that first year, and Whitworth says the competitive coach has “never let me live it down”.
The very next year, the Rams went all the way to the Super Bowl, though their juggernaut offense was humiliated by the genius of Bill Belichick. A couple of years later, however, they acquired Matthew Stafford. The veteran QB was the catalyst for their triumph in Super Bowl 56 following the 2021 campaign.
When Whitworth signed with the Rams in 2016, he left a Bengals team that had made the playoffs in five of the past six seasons for a Rams team that hadn’t reached the postseason since 2004. He thought his role would be to help lay the foundation for the franchise’s future success at the newly built SoFi Stadium. In fact, he didn’t even expect to play in the Rams’ fancy new digs.
In the end, he not only played at SoFi for two seasons, he got to win a Super Bowl at SoFi, as the Rams became just the second team ever to win a Super Bowl at their home stadium.
