GLENDALE, Ariz. – First, the Rams played for their city.

Now they are playing for their pride.

The Rams celebrated an incredibly uplifting victory Monday night, one of the greatest in franchise history, as they defeated the Minnesota Vikings by 14 in the NFL’s first postponed playoff game.

The NFC Wild Card game was moved to Arizona because of the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, and the host Arizona Cardinals went to great lengths to make their home look like SoFi Stadium.

“Perfect,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, summing up the remarkable effort to move and hold the event on such short notice. He attended the game with his wife and daughters.

“I hope we made LA proud for a few moments after everything they’ve been through,” Goodell said in a postgame email to the Los Angeles Times.

Now for the pride part. The Rams will play in a division game at Philadelphia on Sunday, and the Eagles embarrassed them 37-20 at home in Week 12.

The Rams defense, which was overwhelming Monday night and set an NFL postseason record with nine sacks, was trampled by Saquon Barkley in this game. The Eagles back ran for 255 yards and had an astonishing 302 total yards.

“There’s no excuse for 250 rush yards or whatever the amount was,” Rams rookie defensive tackle Braden Fiske said after Monday’s game. “But we know what we’re getting into this week and we’ll be ready.”

The Rams have the fourth-youngest defense in the NFL and one that has endured some growing pains this season. However, in the last four games in which the starters played, the team gave up six, nine, nine and nine points.

“We grew so much from this game,” Rams defensive end Kobie Turner said, referring to the debacle in Philadelphia. “I’m excited to showcase the way we’ve grown and put on a show.”

The team definitely achieved that on Monday evening and left no doubt from the start that they were ready to go. They met the moment, and any butterflies they might have had fluttered away as veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford completed his first 10 passes. Rookie outside linebacker Jared Verse recovered a fumble and scored a 57-yard touchdown.

Before they knew it, the vaunted Vikings were down 27-3.

Nearly 2,000 Rams fans traveled six hours from Los Angeles to the game on buses provided by the team and the Stafford family.

“It was unbelievable what kind of crowd was there for us tonight,” Fiske said.

“It’s a tragedy what’s going on in Los Angeles,” he said. “It affects the people in our own team’s houses. There are so many people out there who have lost everything. So it’s a big driving force for this team and we’re very proud to carry the city on our backs and represent Los Angeles.”

Not only did the players come to Arizona last Friday to prepare for the game, but so did their families. And in some cases, their pets too – six dogs and two cats, to be exact. The Cardinals provided two Boeing 777 jets to transport nearly 400 people.

The experience felt something like a training camp for the players, and some believe the proximity had a motivating effect on the team.

“When you play college football, you often feel like families know each other,” Rams receiver Cooper Kupp said. “People are connected and grow up together. In college you spend four years together and get to know your families, your brothers and sisters.

“That doesn’t happen in the NFL. There is so much movement. You go to work and go home. You see the boys in the locker room, but you don’t meet the families. But when something like this happens, it gives us an opportunity to bring our families together.

“I sit at breakfast in the morning and have children and parents, brothers and sisters of all my teammates around me. There’s a unity that emerges, and that’s a really powerful thing.”

Without question, these Rams are connected in a way that many other NFL teams are not. Time will tell if this makes a difference in how far they progress.

What we do know is that teams evolve and grow over the course of a season, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For example, the Rams were defeated 41-10 at Arizona in a Week 2 game, but defeated the Cardinals 13-9 in Week 17. The latter was a far more mature and experienced Rams team.

The Rams hope they can make the same progress against Philadelphia.

“Since it’s a short week, we’re looking forward to getting right back in the building, hitting the reset button and getting it right back up and running,” Turner said. “We’re looking forward to it.”