Star power.

The stars were out, the stars performed, the stars won a Super Bowl.

As we wrap up the 2021 football season with the conclusion of Super Bowl LVI, the Los Angeles Rams showed us all a different way to win a championship when they beat the Cincinnati Bengals Sunday night in the land of glitter.

We all know you’re supposed to do it with youth and speed, build through the draft.

The Rams are laughing. Too old school. They’re a progressive bunch, and they weren’t waiting for some draft choice to develop, or God forbid turn into a N’Keal Harry. Now of course all that stardust will eventually turn into dust. They always say you can pay me now or pay me later, and the Rams did not hesitate in choosing the latter.

It’s funny, the former Rams coach from waaaay back, George Allen, had the motto “The future is now” when he left L.A.to coach Washington, using a veteran approach to get that Washington team to get to the Super Bowl back in 1972. These Rams certainly took that approach.

The funny thing was the Rams were starting to run out of stars as the playoffs and Sunday night’s game moved on. They lost receiver Odell Beckham, Jr. to a knee injury in the first half. But they were finally smart to put the ball near the end in the hands of their best offensive player, Cooper Kupp, who caught the game winner with 1:25 to go and won the MVP trophy. Kupp was to the Rams what a guy named Julian Edelman was to the Patriots, ironically in a win over Sean McVay’s Rams just three years ago in Atlanta, a Super Bowl that feels like decades ago, doesn’t it?

The Rams had perhaps this year’s best NFL offensive player in Kupp and best defensive player in Aaron Donald. Donald made the defensive play stopping Bengals QB Joe Burrow on the game’s last play.

“I’m so happy, I wanted this so bad, I dreamed this, man,” Donald told NBC right after the game. “We could be world champs, one last play, and I found a way to get to him.”

“They played their tails off on third and fourth down, got to give credit to them,” Burrow said.

The young QB wasn’t able to drive his team downfield like many of us likely expected he would for at least a game-tying field goal and overtime. That’s how things go in the NFL, but it didn’t happen thanks to, well, one of the best defensive players we’ve seen in awhile. A star.

The NFL did itself proud in terms of a great Divisional Round, AFC-NFC Conference championships, and a tight, well played (but not spectacular) Super Bowl that overcame the officials’ foolish attempt to grab the game from the players in the final minutes.

Now what? We enter into that sports abyss that doesn’t even have MLB spring training to start. The Rams likely won’t repeat, the same way the Bucs didn’t. The Patriots won’t make the same big free agent splash in March the way they did last year.

We got the stars, and now we wait until April when, well, most NFL teams will draft with the idea to develop.

Except the Super Bowl champion Rams.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.