INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The Los Angeles Rams used a late comeback to down the Cincinnati Bengals, 23-20, in the Super Bowl on Sunday, capturing an N.F.L. championship by scoring a touchdown with less than two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and then stopping quarterback Joe Burrow from his own last-ditch comeback in the game’s final moments.
Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford finished off the decisive 15-play, 72-yard drive with a 1-yard touchdown pass to Cooper Kupp, who leapt into the air with a defender nearby to grab his second touchdown of the game.
Then, Burrow, the Bengals’ young star who had won a collegiate national championship with Louisiana State, was stopped on his final play and forced to throw an incomplete pass as he faced pressure from Aaron Donald, the Rams’ pass rusher who is one of the best players in the league.
Kupp was named the game’s Most Valuable Player, finishing with eight catches for 92 yards and two scores.
“I just don’t feel deserving of this,” Kupp said after the game, once the “Coop” cheers subsided long enough for him to speak on the field to the crowd. “God is so good. I’m just so thankful for the guys I get to be around, for the coaches, my family. I don’t know what to say.”
It is the second Super Bowl win in franchise history for the Rams, who won their first in 2000, when the team was based in St. Louis and defeated the Tennessee Titans in Atlanta.
“I just can’t say enough about how much I l love this group,” said the Rams’ coach, Sean McVay, who at 36 became the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl. He added: “There’s something really powerful about being a part of something bigger than yourself. And you can see that in the way that these guys competed.”
Los Angeles had spent much of the second half behind Cincinnati after the Bengals started the third quarter with a long touchdown pass and attempted to contain Los Angeles for as much of the second half as possible.
On the first play of the second half, Burrow tossed a 75-yard touchdown to receiver Tee Higgins to give the Bengals a 17-13 lead. Higgins appeared to grasp the face mask of Jalen Ramsey, the Rams’ Pro Bowl defensive back, on the play, but there was no call for offensive pass interference on the field.
On the following possession, Stafford, who was traded to the Rams from Detroit before the season began, threw a pass that was intended for receiver Ben Skowronek, but the ball corralled off his hands and into the grasp of the Bengals’ defensive back Chidobe Awuzie.
The Rams went all in on a potential Super Bowl run this season, trading draft capital for experienced superstars. They bolstered an offense that already boasted Kupp, the most productive receiver in football, by bringing in Odell Beckham Jr., the former Browns receiver, in the middle of the regular season.
And it paid off.
Beckham caught five touchdowns for the Rams in the regular season and had the first score on Sunday, a 17-yard catch that he celebrated by doing the moonwalk on the turf.
Beckham injured his left knee later in the first half on a noncontact injury and did not return.
Bengals fans roared through much of the game even though Los Angeles was in its home stadium. The roars grew louder in the second half — helped perhaps by an electric halftime show that included a bevy of superstar hip-hop artists, led by the Southern California native Dr. Dre.
The Bengals had come from behind in the A.F.C. championship game to defeat Kansas City. But Burrow, despite the heroics that had gotten the Bengals to the Super Bowl, could not muster another comeback. He appeared to injure a knee late in the second half but remained in the game.
The Rams’ defense, highlighted by the ferocious pass rushers Donald and Von Miller, tightened up their pressure up front, sacking Burrow five times in the third quarter to keep the game close.
And it was Donald, the player the Rams had built their team around, who sealed the win.
“I wanted it so bad. I dreamed this, man.” Donald, with tears in his eyes, said on the NBC broadcast after the game. He looked up at the blue and yellow confetti cascading on the field as he was asked possible retirement.
“I’m just in the moment right now,” he said. He added: “This is the promise that I made to my daughter when she was 5. We’re just going to play in the confetti for a minute, and I’m just going to live in the moment.”
