Rams Notebook : Lansford’s Kick Doomed Saints but Made a Winner of Robinson
For an electrifying moment two years ago, Mike Lansford held the fate of two franchises in the crook of his foot.
“That kick seems like it happened so long ago,” he said this week, “like it happened in a dream.”
The New Orleans Saints, playing before an aroused home crowd in the Superdome, were 8-7 in the final game and on the verge of their first winning season in history, leading the Rams, 24-23 with two seconds remaining. The Rams, also 8-7, were trying to return to the National Football League playoffs for the first time in three years under a new coach, John Robinson.
The winner would go to the playoffs. The loser would go home. Lansford hooked the ball just inside the left upright from 42 yards out and broke 70,000 “Who Dat?” hearts.
“That kick was so important,” Lansford said this week while preparing to return to the scene. “It made us a winner again in his (Robinson’s) first year and put us in the playoffs.”
Also important because, Lansford said, “It kept me around.”
“Coach Robinson said if I’d have missed it, he’d still have come out there and said, ‘Way to go.’ I told him, ‘You’re a liar.’ ”
Robinson said Lansford would still be around anyway, though he did compete with Chuck Nelson for the job in 1984.
But the Saints’ coach, Bum Phillips, is gone. He resigned last Monday.
After too many years of disappointment, John Mecom Jr. sold the team this year to a group headed by car dealer Tom Benson, who fired the club’s top executives after Phillips resigned. And the franchise still hasn’t been a winner in 19 seasons, including this one.
A Ram executive said this week: “That loss may have set them back two or three years.”
Did one kick do all that?
Each year there is a notice posted on the clubhouse bulletin board announcing free turkeys for Rams players and staff, donated by a supporter. All they have to do is pick them up.
It’s a fraud perpetrated by the veterans, but it’s surprising how many rookies and other newcomers it hooks every year. For their turkeys, they are sent on a wild goose chase to some fictitious store in some faraway town--this year, La Habra.
A rookie linebacker from Auburn drove around La Habra for an hour and a half and stopped five times for directions before he started to suspect something.
An assistant trainer took a pickup truck so he could collect turkeys for several others. An assistant coach also bit. Names are withheld to avoid further embarrassment.
But all wasn’t lost. The Rams each came up with two turkeys this month: the one owner Georgia Frontiere always gives them for Thanksgiving--and the game they played in Atlanta two weeks ago.
The Dallas Cowboys’ tradition of Thanksgiving Day games started in 1966 with the boom of network telecasts.
Nobody likes to play on Thursday because it disrupts the routine and forces a short week of practice, but Cowboy President Tex Schramm shrewdly volunteered.
“We’ll play it every year--if we can play at home,” Schramm said.
The other clubs agreed, and the Cowboys are 14-3-1 on turkey day, winning the last 6 and 9 of the last 10, including Thursday’s win against the St. Louis Cardinals, 35-17.
What Schramm realized was that the visiting team would always be at a tremendous disadvantage, with virtually half the time to prepare because of travel demands, and the Cowboys also would have an edge over their next opponent by having 10 days of rest. Dallas is 16-1 in games following the Thanksgiving game.
Anyone want to guess what the Rams’ first play will be at New Orleans Sunday?
They have led off with an Eric Dickerson run in seven of the last eight games, and he is averaging four yards.
The exception was the last time they played the Saints at Anaheim, when Dieter Brock threw a pass to Tony Hunter for 24 yards.
The importance of the turnover ratio is reflected in the Rams’ performance this season.
They rank third at plus-9 behind the Bears (plus-20) and the Jets (plus-13), but their only two minus games were two of their three losses--to the 49ers (minus-3) and the Falcons (minus-4). They were plus-2 but lost to the Giants.
If Ron Brown and Henry Ellard continue at their current rates, they will be the only teammates ever to lead the NFL in kickoff and punt returns in the same season.
Brown, with two touchdowns against Green Bay last week, is averaging 36.4 yards on kickoff returns, Ellard 14.5 on punts.
When Ellard returned his 75th punt last week, he qualified for the career list and came in at the top (13.8). The Rams’ career record is 10.9 by V.T. Smith (1949-53) and their season record 18.5 by Woodley Lewis (‘52).
Brown talked about his technique of returning kickoffs:
“It’s mostly reaction. Everybody’s coming down to get you, and sometimes you can’t see where they’re coming from. They can put a tattoo on you pretty good sometimes.
“I try to get up into the wedge, but you really have to look for a spot. Running full speed, you really won’t be able to make any cuts and you really can’t react, so I kind of run under control. Then once I get up to the line, I try to make some things happen.”