Memories of Vikings, Mostly Bad, Won’t Go Away for Some Rams

Some of the old Ram players felt after the ‘70s that if they never saw the Minnesota Vikings again it would be too soon.

Not that the Vikings were so terribly tough.

“Most of those games we played we were the better team,” says defensive tackle Larry Brooks, who is now a Ram coach. “But they’d always find a way to win.”

Not always. It only seemed like it.

The teams met nine times in the six seasons from 1974 through ’79 and the Rams won five and tied another. But the Vikings won three of the four playoff games.

Between them, the Vikings and Dallas Cowboys seemed to frustrate the Rams’ designs on the Super Bowl year after year, until the Rams finally discovered a side entrance through Tampa.

But losing to the Cowboys wasn’t so bad.

Running back Lawrence McCutcheon, now a Ram scout, says: “During those times, the Cowboys were a good team and we were a good team, and we always felt that while you hated to lose, if you lost to the Cowboys it was a little better, because we always felt we were a better team than Minnesota.”

As they must now. Six years after their last engagement, the Rams await the Vikings at Anaheim on Sunday, anticipating the occasion like a rendezvous with an ex-wife.

The old memories roll back to 1974. The Rams, in Chuck Knox’s second season as coach, go to Minnesota to play for the NFC championship--one step from the Super Bowl.

“That’s the one when they called (left guard) Tom Mack for being offside,” McCutcheon said.

The Rams had a first down on the Vikings’ one-yard line at the time. The penalty made it second and six, but quarterback James Harris threw an interception into the end zone on the next play and the Vikings eventually won, 14-10.

The Rams said afterward that it was tight end Pat Curran, now a Chargers executive, who moved--legally--but Mack was the one cited by the official. Mack says he still hasn’t moved to this day.

“After looking at the film, it may not have been either one of them,” McCutcheon said. “It shouldn’t have been a penalty against us at all.”

Two years later, the Rams returned to the dreaded frozen north for another NFC title game. The temperature at kickoff was nine degrees.

The cold didn’t seem to bother the Rams, who drove smartly down to the one-yard line, but then their luck--and maybe their confidence--froze. Knox sent wide receiver Ron Jessie on an end-around to the right, where Jessie was met at the goal line by a pack of purple defenders.

“He scored on the play,” McCutcheon said. “I saw the ball over the (goal) line, in the end zone. They spotted the ball like on the one-inch line.”

The Rams had cause to feel an ominous chill at that moment.

“We still had a couple of more plays to get the ball in,” McCutcheon said. “I think he (Knox) called a quarterback sneak with (Pat) Haden and some other play I can’t remember.

“That was really disappointing because we were one inch from the goal line, and that was the year we were running the ball so well--25-Lead, 44-Lead. I thought at that time we would certainly want to get the ball to one of our backs--preferably myself.

“I couldn’t believe the quarterback sneak. So (on fourth down) we decided to go for the field goal, and they block it and take it back 99 yards.”

Actually, it was only 90, but old Rams still have nightmares of Viking Bobby Bryant scooping up Tom Dempsey’s aborted field goal attempt and racing toward the other end of the field. Jack Youngblood was so heartsick after the game that he couldn’t talk--literally couldn’t talk--for 15 minutes.

The next season, the Rams met the Vikings during the regular season in Los Angeles and clobbered them, 35-3, but that wasn’t a playoff game. That came later, the day after Christmas, when the Vikings returned to L.A. for what had all the earmarks of a lopsided rematch.

“That may have been the most disappointing,” McCutcheon said, “because we’d always had to go back to Minnesota and now we finally got ‘em out here on our home field, and we’re all jazzed up and excited about that.”

Plus, Viking quarterback Fran Tarkenton was out with an injury and the Rams would face his backup, Bob Lee. Everything pointed to a Ram victory.

Except the weather.

“The week before the game it rained like every day and the field was all messed up,” McCutcheon said. “We came out trying to do what we were doing best, which is running the ball. That may have been a mistake.”

Lee, following Coach Bud Grant’s game plan, threw only 10 passes, most in the first half before the field became almost impossible to run on. The Vikings took an early 7-0 lead and built it to 14-0 in the last quarter before the Rams scored a meaningless late touchdown to make it 14-7.

“It’s hard to say what the game would have been if it hadn’t rained, but our chances would have been a lot better,” McCutcheon said. “But some things aren’t meant to be.”

Said Grant: “There have been some unusual games. Weather games. We played in the rain in the playoffs in Southern California, and we played in the snow and the cold in Minnesota. We’ve had an unusual series with the Rams.

“I don’t remember it maybe as much as they do. You dwell more on the losing than you do the winning. The winning you kind of take for granted. That’s what you’re working for. The losses stay with you a little longer.”

Some of them forever.

Ram Notes

Right guard Dennis Harrah, who has missed two games, had a relapse of the torn thigh muscle and left practice early Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s bad,” Coach John Robinson said. “I think he’s still playing (against Minnesota) Sunday, but we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”