Raiders Win Their Third in a Row; Rams Lose Their Second in 3 Weeks : Falcons Play a Familiar Game and (Yawn) Win Easily, 26-14

It was the kind of a game that Ram Coach John Robinson lives for. It was linemen opening huge holes for tailbacks. It was ground control and clock control.

It was a game where your quarterback was not bad but efficient because he completed nine passes in 60 minutes.

It was one where the winning coach could fold his arms and smirk in the fourth quarter because his team has the ball and the back and the clock in his hip pocket.

It was John Robinson football all right, played perfectly here Sunday by the Atlanta Falcons, who took their own sweet time in beating the Rams, 26-14, before a crowd of 51,662 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

And for the first time in recent memory the Rams wake up to find themselves looking up at the Falcons in the standings. They can turn the morning paper any way they like, but the Falcons still will be 5-1 and the Rams 4-2.

And the shame of it was that the Rams were not out-dazzled or out-razzled or out-classed or even out to lunch.

They were just out-Ramed. Out-bored, maybe.

“That looked like us out there,” said Dennis Harrah, a Ram who’s been around long enough to know.

It was mirror football, teams miming each other to death.

And wasn’t it frustrating being on the other side for once?

“They can wear you down,” said Robinson, a noted expert on the subject. “We’re hurting a little bit on our inside defense and they went right after us.”

Let’s see, the Rams were playing without three of their top inside linebackers, Jim Collins, Carl Ekern and Steve Busick. All are out with injuries.

The Falcons like to run up the middle anyway. They have this tailback, Gerald Riggs, who approaches the game the way a bowling ball does a head pin.

Falcon coaches put their heads together and somehow came up with a game plan.

The result was as predictable as, well, how about the Ram offense?

Riggs, who was knocked dizzy in last week’s game and suffered from blurred vision during the week, had no trouble finding holes Sunday. And when there were none, well, he kind of made his own.

Riggs, in an Eric Dickerson-type performance, carried the ball 35 times and gained 141 yards.

Many Rams found tackling him as easy as bringing down a rodeo bronco.

“He’s like a bowling ball,” Ram inside linebacker Mark Jerue said. “He’s no Superman. You just have to hang on.”

The Rams tried, but kept slipping off Riggs into the mud.

But most frustrating to the Rams was what Riggs and the Falcons did once they had the lead.

Atlanta, much like the Rams, pretty much take what they can get on offense. By the fourth quarter, the Falcons had pieced together four Mick Luckhurst field goals, a four-yard run by Riggs and a “thank-you-very-much,” touchdown pass of 22 yards from David Archer to Charlie Brown in the second quarter.

Archer did throw the ball but it was actually last touched by Ram cornerback LeRoy Irvin, who tipped the ball into Brown’s hands at the five-yard line.

Brown, the former Washington Redskin, went untouched into the end zone and was so excited he thought he was a Smurf again, celebrating so much in the end zone that he was called for a penalty.

It was 23-7 in the fourth quarter when the Rams decided that now might be the time to do something.

Showing they are still the king of 90-yard drives, the Rams went 92 yards in 10 plays, Dickerson scoring on a one-yard run with 7:26 left.

That made it 23-14, still giving the Rams time to get back in the game--as long as the other team didn’t hog the ball the rest of the game.

Well, the Falcons did just that, playing it just as the Rams would.

Atlanta got the ball on its 28-yard line with 7:18 left. Riggs carried 5 times on the drive and gained 27 yards. Five minutes later, Luckhurst kicked a 41-yard field goal and the Falcons had run the game clock down to 2:17.

And that was it.

“They are going to run the ball and we’re going to run the ball,” Falcon linebacker Buddy Curry said. “May the best team win. We just slugged it out.”

Archer, the Falcon quarterback, had the kind of day any Ram quarterback does when Dickerson is hot. Archer completed only 9 of 20 passes for 115 yards.

By comparison, Ram quarterback Steve Bartkowski had a good day. Bartkowski completed 14 of 29 passes for 196 yards and 1 touchdown.

But, in case you haven’t noticed, the Ram offense still isn’t working.

There’s a lot of glitter in the scheme this year, a lot of different formations and motion.

You want points, too?

Bartkowski threw 18 yards to Michael Young for a touchdown in the second quarter to give the Rams a 7-3 lead. But that was about as good as it got.

You want problems?

On the Rams’ first play from scrimmage, wide receiver Ron Brown took a swing pass from Bartkowski and ran five yards. It was Brown’s only catch of the day, though he managed to drop a few.

Bobby Duckworth, the other starting wide receiver, did not have a catch.

He did, though, in the second quarter, let a ball slip out of his hands inside the Falcon 20 that would have given the Rams a first down. Instead, they had to settle for a field goal.

“There’s a lot of pressure on us,” Young said of the Rams’ receiving corps. “With Henry (Ellard) out, everyone’s looking at us.”

You want more problems?

“Our kicking game was disastrous, far short of what it was last year,” Robinson said.

Even old reliable, punter Dale Hatcher, is in a slump. His five punts averaged 27.4 yards on Sunday. Hatcher averaged 43.2 yards per attempt last season.

Kicker Mike Lansford missed one field goal from 47-yards out and had another blocked to kill the Rams’ opening drive of the second half.

Mike Pitts crashed up the middle to block Lansford’s 33-yard attempt, Curry picking the ball up and returning it 34 yards to the Ram 39.

The Falcons moved in for a field that put them up, 13-7.

You want one more problem?

Dickerson, who ran for 207 yards last week against Tampa Bay, carried only 16 times Sunday and gained only 73 yards.

“I am not a man to carry the ball 15 times,” Dickerson said. “We can run on that defense. It’s good, but it’s not a (Chicago) Bear defense.

All in all, just another typical Ram football game, the only difference being that the Falcons played it better than the Rams did.

Even Falcon Coach Dan Henning was sounding familiar afterward.

“It depends on your perception of conservative,” he said, defending his team’s offense. “We do what we have to do to win the football game.”