Brock Is Still His Quarterback, Says Robinson

Dieter Brock has a complaint about the Herald Examiner’s post-season poll that rated him a worse quarterback than the Raiders’ Marc Wilson.

“I still haven’t got my trophy,” Brock told a banquet audience in Toronto the other night.

But he got something a lot better this weekend: An assurance from Ram Coach John Robinson that he is still number one.

“He’s the starting quarterback,” Robinson said. “Nothing’s changed.”

In breaking his post-season silence, Robinson also denied that the Rams were looking for a replacement--not Joe Theismann, not Bill Kenney, not Doug Flutie or any other name that has been rumored.

“None of that has any validity at all,” Robinson said.

But he qualified that in terms of this spring’s draft. Brock will turn 35 Wednesday.

“That’s where our interest has to be, in starting to groom somebody for the job,” Robinson said. “The Rams have not had short-term success with quarterbacks.”

Brock escaped the heat and found himself among friends when he hit the Canadian banquet circuit last week.

“He got a great reception,” one witness said. “Everybody was pleased to see him back and said they were surprised by the way he’d been criticized in L.A.”

Brock, a two-time most valuable player in the Canadian Football League, told guests at the charity affair: “I know a lot of you people appreciate what I did up here, but I’ve been taking a lot of heat in L.A. I guess the only way to be a popular quarterback in the States is to look like one.”

Whereupon Brock reached into a pocket of his tuxedo and put on a pair of dark glasses and a headband. The headband read “Easter Seals”--one of the few Jim McMahon didn’t wear at the Super Bowl.

It was one of Brock’s lighter moments since his first National Football League season ended with the Rams’ 24-0 loss to the Bears in the NFC championship game at Chicago a month ago. Since then he has become a principal of polls, a butt of jokes--”the only guy who could overthrow Kadafi”--and a man without a constituency, if not a country.

Brock renounced his Canadian career a year ago to seek success in the NFL, but instead rode the tradition of maligning Ram quarterbacks to new depths.

At mid-season, Robinson noted that it had become the “in” thing to knock Brock, and the fad has intensified since the season ended.

After the Rams’ miserable performance at Chicago when Brock completed only 10 of 31 passes, Robinson did not offer his usual strong support and had been non-committal on Brock’s future with the club since. Brock hadn’t spoken with Robinson but saw no reason he shouldn’t continue to be considered number one. He seemed more concerned about the ill-conceived offense.

“I felt like I did a good job this year,” he said before leaving for Canada. “Some of these reporters don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m really kind of ticked off, but there’s not a heck of a lot I can do about it.

“I don’t think any other quarterback could have come in and done much better with the way things were for me. We threw the ball the least amount of times of anybody in the league this year. If we were supposed to get balance, you’d think we’d throw the ball a bit more.”

While Brock set a club record for completion percentage (59.7) and ranked eighth among NFL passers--only six-tenths of a point behind McMahon, 82.6 to 82.0--the Rams ranked last in passing yardage and Brock completed none of those rainbow bombs fans were led to expect. Brock was reputed to have a bazooka-like arm. And he had speedy receivers in Ron Brown and Henry Ellard.

Brock said that the passing scheme changed almost week to week.

“We had to change according to teams,” he said, “but some things in the passing game should be left in there the whole season . . . (things) that you can depend on and come back to.”

He may have gone to Chicago with his hands tied.

“Our game plan (against the Bears) was definitely different than any plan we had all year,” he said. “We didn’t even attempt to go into using three wide receivers (because) we wanted to keep them (the Bears’ defenders) out of nickel situations. They’d done a good job in their nickel and we wanted to be simple and not have to do a lot of thinking. We thought we’d be better off just leaving in the regular personnel on third down-and-long situations.

“But once we got behind we were very limited in our passing attack. It wasn’t a good plan for catching up.”

The Rams hoped to give Brock time to throw against the Bears’ fierce rush by having him use a short, three-step dropback, but Brock characterized the plan as inflexible.

“Most teams haven’t been very successful against the Bears throwing the football, and when you’re really limited it makes it even worse,” Brock said.

The Rams suffered a critical breakdown when they let the clock run out near the Bears’ goal line at halftime. Instead of using their last timeout or throwing incomplete to stop the clock, without a huddle, they went to a time-consuming huddle. No hurry-up offense. No quick calls at the line of scrimmage.

“The play was sent in from the sideline,” Brock said. “It had to be a huddle call because we hadn’t used any audibles in normal down and distance in our basic passing game. We hadn’t worked on the two-minute offense in that situation. We had done it with three wide receivers (during the season), but we didn’t have a three-wide-receiver plan in that game.”

For that matter, the Rams failed to show an effective two-minute offense all season.

“Maybe it’s something we should have done throughout the year,” Brock said. “But if you haven’t worked on it, it’s hard to do it in the middle of a game in a situation like that.”

Robinson personally took charge of the passing game when he brought in Brock last season, with dismal results, but he indicated no plans to shuffle the coaching staff again. A strong concern is to develop a scheme that avoids some of the 51 sacks the immobile Brock absorbed.

“We have to make sure that he’s not sacked next year,” Robinson said.

Brock: “I still want to talk to Robinson and see what his thoughts are. It’s been a long year for me. I came out early and had to do quite a bit of studying and work to get ready. I’m trying to relax right now.”

Brock plans to do some more traveling. He will take his family home to Birmingham during Easter vacation, following a visit to Jacksonville State later this month to be inducted into his old school’s hall of fame.

At least he’s still popular somewhere.