At Last, Fit Looks Right on Mr. Brock

As Ram Coach John Robinson said before Monday night’s game against the 49ers: “We’ve been playing tight to the vest (offensively), playing to our strong suit, which is defense.”

The National Football League, the Rams were discovering, is a two-suiter. You have a better chance of winning if you have an offense to complement your defense. It’s a simple fashion rule.

Monday night, the Rams came out of the wardrobe closet.

They didn’t exactly remind people of BYU or the San Diego Chargers, but they didn’t set the game of football back two decades, either.

And they were motivated.

As Dennis Harrah said: “We worked hard to put it in the reporters’ face, in the 49ers’ face, and to save face.”

Nothing like a new wardrobe and a facial to make a team feel young and pretty again.

And nobody benefited more from the makeover than Dieter Brock, the Ram quarterback. By Monday evening, there were probably about three people in Los Angeles who weren’t grumbling about Dieter’s quarterbacking, and two of them were Brock and Robinson.

Monday, Brock opened the game by getting sacked on the first play, and by failing to get off a pass in the first quarter.

Then he started picking the 49er defense apart, thread by thread. Five yards here, 15 here, a couple there.

He threw short and long. He lost one long touchdown pass to Henry Ellard, who was ruled out of bounds by an inch in the end zone, and Brock threw a 39-yarder to Ellard that tied the game late in the fourth quarter.

If anyone was vindicated Monday night, it was Dieter Brock. During the week, Robinson talked about possibly switching quarterbacks, and the Dieter Brock Fan Club held its weekly meeting in a corner phone booth.

Did Dieter feel vindicated?

“It’s up to you bleepers (sportswriters) to make that bleeping decision,” Brock growled. This is not to say Brock was a sore winner. That was the only really ungentlemanly thing Brock said in his postgame comments, and what the heck, he had it coming.

Then he settled into his usual affable mood. He didn’t get a nice-guy rep with his teammates and the press by accident.

Brock said he came into the game expecting to have more fun than usual.

“We talked about opening it (the offense) up, throwing the football early,” Brock said. “That’s my kind of game. There were times this season we should have put the ball up more, but we got off to a 7-0 start, and the defense was playing so well we didn’t try to press our offense. We laid back and tried to control the ball. I don’t think that’s the way to play football. You gotta go after ‘em.”

As for the swirling quarterback controversy and all the bad ink during the week and during the season, Brock swears he didn’t let it bother him.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on,” he said, “but I made up my mind I wasn’t gonna worry about it. A lot of stuff has been said that I felt was unjust, but that was fine.”

As for the Rams’ new wide-open offense, well, Brock wound up throwing only 22 passes, completing 16. It wasn’t so much how many he threw, but when and how he threw them.

For instance, fourth quarter, Rams take over on their 34-yard line, trailing, 20-13. On first down, the down where the Rams always run, Brock threw to Tony Hunter, who was interfered with.

“We pass the ball on first down,” said backup quarterback Jeff Kemp, “and get the interference call. Now we’ve got the 49ers back on their heels . . . We opened it up, we mixed it up.”

Unofficially, the Rams had 16 first-down situations and passed the ball, or tried to pass the ball, in 12 of them.

And a lot of the passes were reflex flicks by Brock, unloading the ball quick and short under pressure.

“To tell you the truth, it was confusing at times,” Brock said. “Sometimes I didn’t know what (blocking assignments) to call (at the line of scrimmage). If a guy looked free, I had to throw the football quick and hope they (his receivers) got their heads around. What I saw, I had to take. There was a lot of pressure.

“We also threw deep a few times, which is something we haven’t been doing much of. You’ve gotta take those chances.”

On the touchdown pass to Ellard, Brock says he audibled at the line of scrimmage.

“I didn’t make a very good throw, but Henry made a great catch.”

He did, with a little help from defenders Ronnie Lott and Dwight Hicks, who tipped the ball to Ellard in the end zone.

“We’re due for some of those,” Brock said.

Maybe the 49ers will think twice before hurting Brock’s feelings again. During the week, some of the 49er players were asked about the Ram quarterback controversy, and they voted for Kemp to replace Brock.

Lott opined that Brock holds the ball too long, and Hicks said Kemp has more NFL experience. Nose tackle Michael Carter said: “I think Kemp could give our defense a lot of problems (by) breaking containment. We like the guy that sits in the pocket, so we can collapse the pocket.”

Monday night, Brock didn’t sit much, and the 49ers didn’t collapse many pockets, and it turned out that the 49ers know about as much about Ram quarterbacks as the press and the fans do.

Brock showed us all. The Rams showed us all.

In our faces.

“There was a lot of mean and mad boys coming up on that airplane yesterday,” Dennis Harrah huffed after the game.

Coming back late Monday night, it was a mellow crew, and a well-dressed bunch of guys.