Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr catches a touchdown pass on January 17, 2022 in Inglewood, California.Photo: IC

The Super Bowl descends on Los Angeles for the 56th annual American football showpiece, and it will be familiar territory for one of the teams.

Following the Tampa Bay ­Buccaneers winning last year's Super Bowl LV at their Raymond James Stadium - becoming the first team in NFL history to do so - the Los Angeles Rams will hope that lightning can strike twice as they get ready to contest the Super Bowl at their own SoFi Stadium in LA.

The Rams beat the Bucs on their way to the NFC Championship, ending Tampa dreams of a back-to-back Super Bowl and also the career of Tom Brady in the process, with the legendary quarterback calling time on his NFL days since the defeat.

As fate would have it, it is their rivals for the Vince Lombardi Trophy, the Cincinnati Bengals, who have been drawn as the home team for the Super Bowl though. That means that the Bengals will get the chance to make themselves at home, literally, by taking the Rams usual locker room and pick the uniforms - but the Rams will get the chance to call the coin toss before the game.

History is on the line in the action that follows with the teams having never met before in a Super Bowl, while it is also the first time that the two No.4 seeds from the playoffs have met in a Super Bowl.

The Bengals have not been in this rarefied air since 1988 when they lost to the San Francisco 49ers. They have not even been close since. Prior to this season the Bengals had not even won a playoff game since 1990.

It would be fair to say that they have made up for lost time during these playoffs. The Bengals overcame the Las Vegas Raiders in the wild card round before shocking the AFC No.1 seeded Tennessee Titans to move on to the AFC Championship.

There they met the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs, a team who had made the trip to the last two Super Bowls - beating the San Francisco 49ers in 2020 and losing to the Bucs last time out.

The Rams have been in a Super Bowl more recently than the Bengals, appearing just four years ago but back when they were the St Louis Rams prior to moving to Los Angeles.

They lost to the New England Patriots in 2018 and will be hoping to put that right in their new home come Sunday night.

Should they manage that then Rams coach Sean McVay would become the youngest ever to lift the Lombardi Trophy aloft. At 36 McVay would match former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin's age when he won Super Bowl XLIII in 2009.

McVay, who has only just turned 36, has been the Rams coach for five seasons and he comes up against another young coach - and former colleague - in the form of Zac Taylor, the 38-year-old Bengals coach.

The pair are the two youngest coaches to line up on opposite sides of a Super Bowl but there is room for experience and nowhere more so than the Rams lineup.

Von Miller was traded in from the Denver Broncos and he has been offering his Rams teammates an insight into what it takes to win a Super Bowl - just as he did when he was named Super Bowl MVP in Denver's win over the Carolina Panthers in 2016.

Minnesota Vikings offensive tackle Christian Darrisaw (left) and Los Angeles Rams outside linebacker Von Miller chase a fumble by quarterback Kirk Cousins on December 26, 2021 in Minneapolis. Photo: IC

"Take advantage of the opportunity, and I'm here to tell you, opportunities like this don't present themselves all the time," is the message that Miller said that he had been telling his ­teammates, as he told the media in a pre-Super Bowl press conference.

Miller has called on those same teammates to step up as he looks to add to his own 1-1 Super Bowl record.

"Football is just one of those sports, man, [that] if you can motivate your guys to play to a level they wouldn't normally play at, man, that's what makes special teams and you need that," Miller said.

He wants a taste of heaven again. "This will be my third Super Bowl, I just want to lay it all out there, man, and like I said, I don't want Super Bowl 50 to be the highlight of my career, hoping that [Super Bowl] 56 is the highlight of my career, hoping all the plays that I make ... will be the best Von that I've put forward in my career. It's the biggest game of my life and I want to go out there and play that way."

Odell Beckham Jr is another veteran that the Rams brought in this season and he is also pinching himself.

"I mean, playing in the Super Bowl is everything you could have ever dreamed of," Beckham said. 

"When I was sitting at home, and there was nothing but silence, and it was just me and God just sitting there, this is what came over me. It was Los Angeles Rams, and the opportunity to do exactly what we're doing right now."

"I know the opportunity that's at hand. I don't take it lightly," Beckham added.

The last of the Rams' veteran signings is quarterback Matthew Stafford, a former No.1 draft pick who arrived in LA this year after spending his career with the Detroit Lions. Stafford was 0-3 in the playoffs in his career before this season, in which he has gone 3-0 and he will be looking to make it 4-0, of course.

Bengals QB Joe Burrow - another former No.1 pick, which makes this only the second time two No.1 picks have met in a Super Bowl - is at the other end of his career.

This is his second season in the NFL and he lost his first to injury. Should the 25-year-old secure a Bengals win, he will be the fourth youngest QB to win a Super Bowl - behind Ben Roethlisberger (23), Patrick Mahomes (24) and Tom Brady (24). Not bad company in hindsight.