It's a play-off debut for Minnesota’s Sam Darnold, who has had a remarkable resurgence with the Vikings this season - becoming the first quarterback ever to win 14 regular-season games in his first season with a new team.

You may not have guessed it in a quiz, but Matthew Stafford leads all qualifying quarterbacks in NFL history in terms of passing yards per game in the play-offs.

So no surprise he started off strongly tonight...

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Rams receiver Cooper Kupp speaking before kick-off: "You just take it a day at a time. We've got guys in all kinds of different situations, spread all over LA County, with the evacuations.

"We've come together a bit, worked towards something and had a task at hand. We take this very seriously, knowing that there's something special to play for this week."

Matthe Stafford manages to draw the Vikings into a pre-snap penalty which gives the Rams a first down as they close in on an opening score.

The Rams come up short on third down, but Sean McVay keeps the offence out on the field and he's going for it on fourth down with about a yard to gain.

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Matthew Stafford is starting his ninth career play-off game tonight.

He led the Rams to victory in Super Bowl LVI, when he threw for 1,188 passing yards in four games, which was the second-most in a single play-off campaign ever, so watch out for a big game from him here.

A play-action pass and 27-yard gain with Matthew Stafford hitting Puka Nacua over the middle. Nacua had a huge game in the week eight meeting with the Vikings when he had seven catches for 106 yards.

Minnesota kick us off so it is the Los Angeles Rams who will get the ball first. Let's see what Matthew Stafford can do.

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The Rams may not scare anyone in the stats columns, as they were the lowest scoring team to make it into the play-offs, with just 21.6 points per game, while on defence they gave up the most yards of any of the 14 sides to make the post-season (353.1 per game).

However, they won nine out of 11 after their bye week to claim the NFC West, booking a sixth play-off spot in eight years under head coach Sean McVay - which of course includes a Super Bowl win.

So do not count these Rams out.

Troy Aikman
Three-time Super Bowl winner on ESPN/ABC

[The Rams' key starters] desperately needed that week off last week to rest, Matthew Stafford being one of them. He's pretty banged up.

They started leaning on their run game and the play-action game. Sean McVay's taken a lot of pressure off Matthew Stafford. It's helped the defence and the offensive line, and they've got themselves in this wildcard game tonight.

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NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has come in casual mode tonight...

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Some Minnesota Vikings fans have made the trip to Arizona for the game, which when you think it was only switched from LA late this week is a decent effort!

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The Vikings are the first ever 14-win team to be a wildcard in the play-offs, as they had a shot at the number one seed last week against Detroit.

The Lions won that emphatically, so just how Kevin O'Connell's side manage to deal with that loss will be huge tonight.

These two teams met in week eight of the season at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, with the Rams running out 30-20 winners behind four touchdown passes from Matthew Stafford.

The Rams were just 2-4 heading into the game with Minnesota 5-1 and the Vikings rebounded to finish the season 14-3 while the Rams could only manage a 10-7 record, so this should be a pretty even contest.

So will it be revenge or repeat tonight?

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The Rams are showing their support for the victims of the LA fires and also the first responders working so hard to get them under control.

Phoebe Schecter
BBC Sport NFL columnist

The Rams were kind of criticised for resting a bunch of their guys for their final game of the regular season but they’ll be coming off a rested week while the Vikings are coming off one of the most emotionally draining performances at the Detroit Lions.

Also, people say the NFL’s a copycat league so the Rams will look at what the Lions did against the Vikings - with back-ups in - and say ‘we can do the same thing, we can take away what the Vikings do’.

Sometimes when you build something up so much, you can come away so deflated.

Phoebe's prediction: Rams win.

Ben Collins
BBC Sport

Back in October, Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell gave me more than 30 minutes of his time to discuss the culture he's established during his three years in Minnesota.

He stressed how they just look to go 1-0 each week, and that's the mindset again heading into tonight's play-off game. Despite having a better record than the Rams, they've had to hit the road but they accept that's the play-off format.

I spoke to O'Connell again after last week's loss at Detroit, which means the Vikings are the NFC's fifth seed, not the first, and he said: "We had a chance to win our division and unfortunately we were unable to get that done."

The Vikings have a 24-hour rule in which to process both wins and losses, then begin looking forward, and O'Connell said he ended that day by telling his players "we didn't get it done yesterday, but make no mistake about it, what we accomplished and what we've built is still a thing that we can be very proud of".

He added: "Now we can be confident in ourselves to try to get a win. We've proven we can consistently trust our process and preparation then go turn it loose when we get an opportunity to compete."

The Arizona Cardinals are usually fierce rivals with the Rams, but they've turned over their stadium and training facility to their NFC West foes for tonight's game.

And there looks like plenty of Rams fans are attending the game, with over 30 coaches officially used to transport fans from LA to Arizona - so let's see if they can create a home atmosphere for their side.

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The last time the Rams and Vikings played each other in the play-offs we had the highest scoring Divisional Round game even - with the then St Louis Rams emerging with a 49-37 victory in Janaury 2000 on their way to winning the Super Bowl that year.

Kurt Warner threw five touchdown passes for the team known as the 'Greatest Show on Turf' with the likes of Isaac Bruce and Marshall Faulk as they edged out Randy Moss and Cris Carter on the Vikings squad.

Something like that today would do us nicely..