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LOS ANGELES — Is this really happening?

In the shadow of the Coliseum, where the Rams have not played a playoff game in 39 seasons, the most devoted of diehards, dressed in their throwback yellow and blues, can’t help but smile and wonder. A year ago, a playoff berth was no more than an impossible dream.

But that feels like an eternity ago now, as a surreal celebration is underway on the blacktop of Lot 2. Music is blaring. The smell of barbecue is in the air. The beer is flowing, selfies are being snapped, and the mood is electric. Strangers pass and toast red cups, flashing the same stunned look. How did we get here? They all seem to wonder.

The euphoria will wear off in the hours to come, as the Rams’ comeback efforts fell short against the Falcons, their playoff party ending after just one wild night. But even the wildest of optimists in Lot 2 will admit, long before the result is final, that they never expected to be here at all. Not only did the Rams return to the postseason, where the franchise hadn’t been since 2004, they hosted a playoff game in Southern California for the first time since Jan. 4, 1986.

That day, the Rams shut out the Cowboys, 20-0, in Anaheim. Three weeks later, Sean McVay, the wunderkind coach behind the Rams’ revival, was born.

Mark Millsap was in the Anaheim Stadium stands for that final playoff game in the Southland. He wore an Eric Dickerson jersey and watched as the Rams back tore through the Dallas defense for 248 yards. Eight years later, when the Rams moved to St. Louis, Millsap drew a red line through the middle of that jersey in a fit of rage.

He never imagined then that they might return. But 32 years later, Millsap stood on the blacktop in a hard hat outfitted with Rams horns, wearing the jersey of Dickerson’s heir apparent, Todd Gurley. As the party carries on around him, he turns to his son, Mark, who, like the Rams coach, wasn’t born the last time the Rams played a playoff game in Southern California. Now, though, father and son are together amid this euphoric sea of Rams jerseys, and Millsap can’t help but wonder if the decades of exile were all leading to this.

“I think it was meant to be,” Millsap says.“I was thinking about that today. If they would’ve never left, we wouldn’t have Sean McVay. Everything would be different. It all fell into place. It came full circle.”

Here, at this tailgate, there’s plenty of talk of destiny. It’s the only explanation that seems to justify how this turnaround came to be, but inside the Coliseum, the sentimentality fades into the ecstasy of the moment.

Since the Rams return, questions of whether the team might ever catch on in the city have raged on. But on this particular night, the buzz in the building is at a fevered pitch, as game time approaches. Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner who presided over the Rams return, walks the first row of bleachers obliging autographs and snapping selfies. Goodell’s presence at most NFL stadiums often elicits boos, but here, the sentiment in the building leaves no room for negativity.

One poster Goodell signs reads “Why not us? Why not now?” And until the final whistle blew and the team’s charmed season met its end, it certainly felt like this night belonged to the Rams. Before the game, as a Kendrick Lamar bass line quaked through the entire bowl, fans danced on bleachers across the stadium. Players bounced to the beat as they stretched. It wasn’t until the game started that their energy turned anxious and frenetic.

Rams legends, from Eric Dickerson to Torry Holt to Steven Jackson, lined the sidelines. Celebrities made appearances. Snoop Dogg performed at halftime, rapping in a suitable fog of smoke, splicing the Rams name into a medley of his greatest hits. It was one hell of a party, in a city that lives for such nights.

For the diehards who gathered hours earlier on Lot 2, it was a culmination.

“We stuck it out all of these years,” said Dave Stanley, one of the original members of the Rams’ fan group, the Melonheads. “We hung with the Rams. Now, it’s all worth it.”

For the rest of Los Angeles? Only time will tell whether the Rams have won them over. A long playoff run might’ve gone a long way towards making that a reality.

But for one night, the apathy and empty seats were a distant memory. The playoff drought was over. After 32 years, the NFL postseason returned, however briefly, to Los Angeles. And after a miraculous, one-year turnaround for the Rams, it seems clear that the city won’t have to wait much longer to experience it again.

LOS ANGELES — Playoff experience didn’t beat the Rams Saturday, not exactly. Playoff expediency did.

The Atlanta Falcons made no turnovers. They identified the Rams’ rush defense as a sore they could irritate, and they did. They punted when they should have, and they kicked field goals, from 54 and 51 yards, when they needed to. They needed to remove Todd Gurley from the passing game and they did that, too.

They checked all the boxes they could find and they won, 26-13, breaking the Rams’ express after one long, glorious lap.

Afterward, Jared Goff was repeatedly asked to mouth the we-had-a-good-season speech. It should give hope to Rams fans that he would not.

“It (stinks) to have to quit playing,” Goff said. “We’ve got some really good dudes in there. The more big games you can play, the better off you are. As far as playoff experience goes, I don’t even know what that means. You just play the game and they played it better than we did. If this had happened two weeks ago like this, they would have beaten us then, too.”

Often the quarterback has to bear the cross when a season dissipates. Goff left that honor to Pharoh Cooper, the Pro Bowl returner who muffed a punt and fumbled a kickoff, and the Falcons took those chances to score 10 points.

“The first one was a fluke, the second one I know he wishes he had back,” Goff said. “Those special teams guys have won games for us all year.”

Goff was actually fine, considering he was belabored by the pass rush on the first two series, and that the Rams ran only 10 plays in the first quarter and six in the third. They only had the ball for 22:25. That wasn’t enough bandwidth for all the musicians in the band.

“We had to wait to settle into the game,” Goff said, “but we’ve done that before.”

Goff actually made enough big plays. At the end of the first half he drilled Robert Woods with a beautiful 39-yarder down the middle, to set up what might have been a touchdown try if Rob Havenstein hadn’t been caught holding. Sean McVay chose the field goal there and a 13-10 deficit.

Even after the Falcons went ahead by 13, Goff whisked the Rams downfield in a hurry, without blowing a timeout. He went 11 for 13 on that drive until he threw what appeared to be a 5-yard score to Tyler Higbee. At that point there was 2:16 left and the Rams didn’t need to kick onside, with all three time outs in hand.

But then Higbee fell victim to that popular game show, Catch Or Not A Catch, and the Rams had to pick up a fourth-and-5. Deion Jones, one of a horde of quick and brazen Atlanta defenders, broke up the try to Sammy Watkins.

“That’s what I feel good about,” Aaron Donald said. “We got down, and we made some mistakes we shouldn’t have made, but our guys came out and fought.”

Goff had three completions for 20 or more yards. He just didn’t make enough little plays that could sprout into big ones, couldn’t find Gurley on those screens and flares that have overloaded defenses all year. Although Gurley got 101 rushing yards, he caught four balls for just 10 yards. Even on a short week and with travel, the Falcons found the instruction manual and followed it rigidly.

“Really we just didn’t have enough plays,” McVay said. “We only tried one of those screens, and they were in a jam structure early on and forced an incompletion. It really goes back to the rhythm. We weren’t able to get enough plays off.”

The Falcons filled the box with as many as nine defenders and overpopulated the middle and the flat. Then their cornerbacks won more man-to-man battles with the L.A. receivers than they lost.

Offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian also dodged the pitchforks for another week by calling 39 runs, a tactic that worked better after Michael Brockers, the left  defensive end, left with a knee problem.

“Michael has been so stout for us,” McVay said. “They did a good job of getting runs off consistently.”

The observant Falcons noted that the Rams were 30th in a 32-team league in yards given up per rush (4.7).

“We thought we might be able to crease them,” Ryan said, “but the best thing is that we stayed with it  even though we didn’t do much with it in the first half. We thought our offensive line could lean on them.  It was tough sledding for sure, but it was our best plan for success.”

The Falcons needed only one home run and they got it with 7:22 left in the third quarter. Working against a corner blitz, Ryan flipped a screen to Mohamed Sanu, who set up his blockers and burst for 52 yards. Two plays later, Ryan slipped on the annoyingly slick turf but still was able to lob an 8-yard score to Julio Jones, for the 13-point lead.

You could probably say the lack of experience didn’t necessarily hurt the Rams, but the wealth of it helped Atlanta. Last year the Falcons won the NFC and then, as you might have heard, let a 25-point lead evaporate in the Super Bowl. Some of them were around in 2012 when the Falcons came within a play of beating San Francisco for the NFC title. This was Ryan’s ninth playoff start. The amplified Coliseum noise was just a low buzz to them.

“You have to keep yourself in a mental space where you’re not worried about the finality of the game,” Ryan said. “The challenge is to stay locked in and keep your mindset on execution.”

The Rams may be great or disappointing in 2018 but they won’t be the same. Their schedule will be tougher and certainly more disjointed, with more prime-time games. They probably won’t have a healthy offensive line for 16 games. The new-team smell that pervaded Thousand Oaks all season won’t return.

But the Rams will be patching, not rebuilding, and if you thought they had the coach and the quarterback before Saturday night, you must feel they still do.

“I don’t think the game was too big for our players,” McVay said. It wasn’t. It was too quick.

FULLERTON — A man was killed Saturday night when he was struck by a car while walking in Fullerton, authorities said.

It was just after 9 p.m. at 151 West Orangethorpe Ave., said Fullerton police Sgt. T. Kandler.

The man, in his 30s, was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, Kandler said.

The car’s driver remained at the scene and assisted in the investigation, which shut down Orangethorpe Avenue between Harbor Boulevard and Highland Avenue, the sergeant said.

LOS ANGELES – Kings coach John Stevens painted an impressive picture of the Nashville Predators.

“I think their defense is arguably as good as any defense in the league,” Stevens said at the morning skate ahead of Saturday night’s game against the visiting Predators. “And not just six – they have eight guys deep. They’ve got a goalie (Pekka Rinne) who handles the puck really well and I think they’re really, really solid down the middle now. They’re a good team. I think they’re as good a team as there is in the West.”

Unfortunately for the Kings, their coach was right as the Predators rode two goals by Austin Watson to a 4-3 victory over the Kings before a sellout crowd of 18,230 at Staples Center.

Nashville (24-11-6, 54 points) came in having lost two in a row and three of its past four. The Kings (24-13-5, 53 points) have lost two consecutive games.

Nashville took a 1-0 lead when Roman Josi beat Jonathan Quick from about 10 feet inside the blue line at 15:08 of the first period. It was a power-play goal, and it came after the Kings had killed all but 19 seconds of a four-minute penalty to Drew Doughty.

Doughty was called for interference at the 11:27 mark. Before the power-play began, Doughty was whistled for unsportsmanlike conduct, adding two more minutes.

Fifteen seconds in, Dustin Brown drew a tripping penalty, meaning the Predators would have a two-man advantage for 1:45. The Kings and their league-best penalty-kill unit killed Brown’s penalty and almost all of the two Doughty incurred, but Josi foiled all that with his eighth of the season. Assists went to Kyle Turris and P.K. Subban.

Nashville out-shot the Kings 9-7 in the first 20 minutes.

The Kings tied the scored 1-1 when Adrian Kempe scored his 13th of the season at 6:43 of the second. The goal was unassisted as Kempe stole the puck from Subban in the Nashville end and shot one past Rinne.

But some five minutes later, at 11:53, Scott Hartnell scored his sixth when he got one past an out-of-position Quick from point-blank range for a 2-1 Predators lead. Hartnell was left unmarked. Ryan Johansen and Alexei Emelin had the assists.
Not satisfied, Nashville increased its lead to 3-1 when Watson scored his fourth from about 15 feet at the 16:49 mark. Assists went to Subban and Miikka Salomaki.

Quick went down early in the period when a dislodged net hit him in the back. Quick went down and seemed to be favoring his left knee, but he stayed in the game.

The Kings had 18 shots on goal through two periods, the Predators 15.
The Kings pulled within 3-2 when Trevor Lewis scores his 10th of the season at 3:56 of the third, assists going to Alex Iafallo and Nick Shore.

That joy was short-lived when Watson scored his second of the game and fifth of the season at 5:05 for a 4-2 Predators advantage. Ryan Ellis and Calle Jarnkrok had the assists.

The Kings hung tough and when Tyler Toffoli scored his 18th on a power play at 8:24 of the period, they were within 4-3. Tanner Pearson and Anze Kopitar assisted.

NOTES: The Kings on Saturday announced they activated defenseman Christian Folin off of the injured reserve list and put defenseman Jake Muzzin on the IR. Folin went on the IR on Dec. 21 with an upper-body injury. Muzzin also has an upper-body injury, with his placement on the IR retroactive to Jan. 4. … The Kings will now take their mandated bye and won’t play again until next Saturday, when they host the Ducks.

PARAMOUNT — A man driving a green Honda recklessly on freeways and surface streets in Orange and Los Angeles counties Saturday night was stopped by a CHP Pursuit Intervention Technique maneuver in Paramount after about a 35-minute pursuit.

Garden Grove police officers began the pursuit when the man was observed on the Garden Grove (22) Freeway, according to broadcast reports.

The pursuit went through Garden Grove, Seal Beach and part of Long Beach with the car moving the wrong way on freeways and surface streets as the car sped northbound on the San Gabriel River (605) Freeway and the Riverside (91) Freeway, getting off on Bellflower Blvd. and onto the Glen Anderson (105) Freeway, as observed from KNBC4’s helicopter.

The driver got off at Paramount Boulevard and went southbound in northbound lanes until turning east on Alondra Boulevard, where the CHP used the PIT maneuver to spin and disable the vehicle.

The man and a female passenger were taken into custody.

Graeme Gaughan, Tourne de Transmission’s creative director, returned to foreign cultures for fall 2018, the inspiration material that fueled his rise on the men’s wear scene. “I got a bit distracted in the last few seasons,” he told WWD, explaining that this season it was images in photographer Lee Gordon’s book, “Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti,” that galvanized his return to form.
Gordon’s images of the carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, in the Nineties depict men smeared in paint or mud wearing dresses, and children in ill-fitting suits gathered to reenact a grisly story from their history.
Gaughan reinterpreted Gordon’s otherworldly characters through a refined collection predominantly in black . Tailored coats skewed longer on one side, with asymmetrically applied pockets, while lace T-shirts were a subtle reminder of the spectacle and gender fluidity of the collection’s inspiration.
A baby pink check lifted the mood and looked especially good for a hooded parka with a dipped hem that was paired with a zip-front sweat and raw denim jeans.

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Ben Sherman teamed with Henry Holland on a capsule range of separates for men and women which paid homage to the Northern Soul culture and the night owls that populated it.
The brand’s creative director Mark Williams worked with Holland, who is known for his whimsical prints and playful details. Holland added his own twist and gave an an upbeat touch to the label’s classic knitted polos, button-down shirts, T-shirts, jackets, denim, knitwear, trousers and coats.
“Mark had already started working on a collection inspired by Brian Cannon’s photography,” Holland explained. “There are some amazing casual images of Northern Soul nights where people go and dance all night long. And obviously there is the connection with the North of England and myself.”
Holland brought a sportier aesthetic to the brand in the form of technical tracksuits which featured all-over geometric prints and bold patterns. Holland also played with the brand’s logo, which ran down the legs of tracksuit joggers. This was done in bright primary colors for both men and women.

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Tinie Tempah took a new direction for his label’s third outing, fusing the brand’s signature sporty aesthetic with more utilitarian elements, inspired by working uniforms.
“I was looking at the real world. What We Wear is trying to reflect the modern, stylish Millennial man and the main thing that he does after the age of 18 is work. Every job, whether you are working underground or in the sky, requires a certain uniform,” said the musician and designer.
He explored the concept of uniform as armor, delivering a collection filled with wearable pieces with lots of urban attitude.
There were matching trouser and jacket combinations, in a neutral palette of navy, black, gray and khaki. The trousers were slim-fitted and done in a structured coated cotton, while jackets and shirting in the same fabric featured large cargo pockets and more oversized silhouettes.
Tailoring was also introduced in the form of a loose, boiled wool suit, while less formal elements included nylon tracksuits paired with matching puffer jackets.
Tempah stressed that he wants the brand to maintain a minimalistic aesthetic and focus the attention on the clothes, without any direct references to himself or his name. “My ambition is to see the clothes on every young

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