Rams Trying New Numbers on Defense : They’re Tinkering With Aggressive 4-1-6 Against Passing Game

Only four teams in the National Football League were easier pickings than the Rams against the pass last season.

They didn’t really defend against it as much as they tried to contain it, as though it was a raging brush fire they knew they couldn’t control.

Lacking a high-powered rush to worry opposing quarterbacks, the Rams played a safety-first pass defense. They gave up only 18 touchdown passes, but that’s because their secondary usually started back-pedaling when the opponent broke its huddle.

The result was more than two miles--3,666 yards--of yardage conceded between the line of scrimmage and the goal line.

This season, the Ram defense hopes to go on offense. Fritz Shurmur, the defensive coordinator, said the purpose is “to attack people and challenge them in the passing game.”

So far this summer the program seems to be on schedule. The Rams (2-0) have permitted the Houston Oilers and St. Louis Cardinals--teams that think throw--only 289 yards passing, and have registered 14 sacks.

A key component of the new approach is the “dime” defense, so called because it features six defensive backs. The old “nickel” defense, has five defensive backs, so six defensive backs make a dime, if you’re a football coach.

In any case, although the Rams’ nickel wasn’t worth two cents a year ago, the dime could pay rich dividends.

It’s not new. It deploys four linemen, a single linebacker and the six defensive backs. Normally, it would be used only in long-yardage situations, although the San Francisco 49ers used it almost exclusively to stifle dangerous Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX last January, 38-16.

But a wrinkle that the 49ers used and one the Rams will use has the sixth defensive back--Vince Newsome in the Rams’ case--lined up in a linebacker’s position, so that the defense looks more like a 4-2-5 than a 4-1-6.

Shurmur said: “You want the flexibility of a four-man rush and good coverage. The offense counteracts that with four wide receivers. With the dime, you have that dime linebacker to match up on that fourth receiver.”

Or to rush the passer and defend against the occasional running play. It’s a hybrid position.

“You’d like to have all the ingredients of a linebacker physically but the coverage ability of a defensive back,” Shurmur said. “Vince Newsome measures up. He hits like a big load.”

Newsome, a fourth-round draft choice from the University of Washington two years ago, is only 6-1 and 179 pounds, but he is one of the hardest hitters on the team.

The only real linebacker in the scheme is Mike Wilcher, who, like Newsome, is one of six players coming off the bench to play the special defense--another page borrowed from the 49ers’ Super Bowl book.

Coach John Robinson decided in the off-season that if he couldn’t have any superstars on defense, he would platoon freely to let everybody do what he does best when he wants it done. Up front there will be specialists to stop the run and others to rush the passer.

Even Jack Youngblood, if he is able to play a 15th season, probably will be used only as an outside rusher in passing situations, which is how he made his reputation, anyway.

Hardly anyone gets rich and famous just making tackles--and that’s caused a little grumbling around training camp, too. Linemen want sacks, not tackles.

Shurmur said: “I don’t know that we need to face the problem of anybody being too unhappy yet because we’re still identifying who those four down linemen are.”

It seems likely, though, that more people will get to play. The 49ers’ substitution plan involved 22 players on defense.

The Rams aren’t going that far, but Shurmur said: “I could see us using all the defensive linemen we have. With Wilcher and as many as six defensive backs, that’s 17 guys in the game plan.”

Last season, the Rams’ basic defense called for the use of only 13 players, but they couldn’t use the dime because their most experienced safeties, Nolan Cromwell, Johnnie Johnson and Eric Harris, were injured and never available at the same time.

“Some games it was all we could do to get four healthy defensive backs on the field,” said Steve Shafer, who coaches the secondary.

The final beauty of the dime defense, as Shurmur sees it, is its flexibility.

“We can rush with as many as seven people or defend with seven,” he said. “We can play zone or man or a combination.”

The dime’s basic weakness is against the run, but Shurmur said: “If you want to run (on) third and nine and can do it consistently, you’ll change our philosophy. But until you do, that’s what we’re gonna do.”