INGLEWOOD – Yes, they say hope lasts forever. But the Rams were certainly busy with the issue Sunday afternoon, weren’t they?

The odds of an NFL team starting the season 0-3 and making the playoffs were considered only slightly better than the odds of any of us winning a Powerball jackpot. Only four of the 162 teams that started 0-3 since 1990 have reached the postseason, and since the turn of the century, only one has done so: the 2018 Houston Texans. None of those teams have won the Super Bowl.

So when the injury-plagued Rams fell behind 14-0 to the San Francisco 49ers, playing in a home stadium where red-clad visiting fans seemed to make up 65 to 70 percent of the crowd, things looked bleak. No, make that damn near hopeless.

And perhaps Sunday was the revenge of the damned near-hopeless. A half hour or so after Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts hit back-to-back homers in the ninth inning to complete the Dodgers’ comeback from a 5-1 deficit, beat Colorado and preserve a three-game lead in the NL West, Rams kicker Joshua Karty completed his own team’s improbable finish, hitting a 37-yard field goal with four seconds left to bring his team back from a 14-0 first-quarter deficit to a 24-14 lead with 11:57 left in the game.

Finals: Rams 27, 49ers 24, and the Rams’ video crew happily pans the giant Infinity screen to shots of 49ers fans climbing the escalators down to the parking lot, or those still in the stands with fearful looks on their faces. Sometimes there’s a benefit to watching the other team’s fans flood your stadium, especially when you get to watch them slink away in defeat.

But this was a victory that could reach far beyond this week, even given the NFL’s mantra that every game is a standalone event.

A team that lost both of its leading receivers to injuries and also had to reshuffle its offensive line played with what coach Sean McVay described as “a lot of grit, a lot of determination.” And while the hero at the end of the game was rookie kicker Karty — that is, after the 49ers’ attempt at a rugby-style play was stifled in the final five seconds of the game — an equally unlikely hero might have been Xavier Smith, a sophomore receiver from Florida A&M who was promoted from the practice squad on Saturday and sent to return punts.

The original plan was for Kyren Williams to return punts along with his running back duties. He returned two for 12 yards in two games, plus a fair catch, and perhaps it occurred to McVay and his staff that since Smith was slated to bolster receiver depth, why not try him on returns as well?

He returned one, and it may have changed the Rams’ season. With the score tied 24-24 and the Rams defense holding the 49ers to their own 45 with 55 seconds left, Smith caught Mitch Wishnowsky’s punt at his own 12 and returned it to midfield before being pushed out of bounds.

That set the tone. Tight end Colby Parkinson was called for a 25-yard pass interference penalty on De’Vondre Campbell Sr. — and, to be fair, the Rams also had defensive holding and illegal use of hands violations to choose from on the same play. Williams then carried 6 yards from right guard to the 49ers’ 19 to give Karty his star turn.

Smith was quick to compliment the guys blocking for him, saying they “had as much of a pivotal moment in this game as I did.” But it had to be a moment that amplified the possibilities in his own mind, and I asked him what that meant to him.

“Just knowing that the preparation that I’ve done from Monday to game day, (that) I’ve done everything I can to prepare myself to play in this game,” he said. “Just… having peace of mind knowing that I’ve done everything I can so that when the moment comes, I’m ready to take it.”

Long before that, late in the second quarter, another normally unsung hero changed the momentum of the game. Ronnie Rivers took a direct snap that appeared intended for punter Ethan Evans on fourth-and-6 from the Rams’ 23, with the 49ers leading 14-0 and having had 32 offensive snaps to the Rams’ 19 to that point.

Rivers turned that point-blank snap into a 7-yard gain, and that first down led to the first of Williams’ three touchdowns, a 15-yard reception from Matthew Stafford on which he tossed a San Francisco defender and somersaulted into the end zone. Instead of a threatening rout, it was a ballgame.

And if there was one more improbable but essential play, it came from Tutu Atwell, who was in the spotlight with Puka Nucua and Cooper Kupp sidelined. Atwell was targeted five times and had four catches for 93 yards, the biggest of which was a 50-yard play down the sideline with 2:43 left in the fourth quarter, with the Rams still up 24-17 and having the ball back just after 49ers’ kicker Jake Moody went wide on a 55-yard field goal try that might have iced it. (Or maybe not, given how the day unfolded.)

Instead, Atwell got the Rams to the San Francisco 5-yard line, Williams got them in the end zone and tied the game with 1:51 left. And that’s when the fun began.

“When you’re in a game like that (when you’re) 0-2, it’s easy to think, ‘This feels like last week,'” Rams linebacker Troy Reeder said. “But there was just no let-up from this group and I’m just really proud of them and how they fought and persevered and were able to pull it out at the end.

“I was walking up and down the sideline and I felt like everybody was confident that at some point we were going to get a momentum swing. And eventually we did. And we were able to put some points back on the board on offense and make some stops on defense.”