Rams Keep It Simple, But It’s More Than the Jets Can Overcome
By the looks on the faces in the Ram locker room after Sunday’s 17-3 win over the New York Jets, you’d have sworn the team had just pulled off the heist of the century and walked away free.
Wanted: Defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur, who wore a most self-satisfied smirk.
Wanted: Linebacker Mel Owens, who, with devilish grin, was moved to ask of his team’s defense, “How do we get away with it?”
Wanted: Jerry Gray, the former safety the Rams are experimenting with at cornerback. The team doesn’t know if things will work out, but you can reach Gray this January at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii.
Wanted: An explantion of how the Jets could generate 350 yards of total offense and go home with only a field goal. Or how a quarterback, Ken O’Brien, could complete 28 of 47 passes for 272 yards and consider his day a flop.
The Jets will open the newspaper today and shake their heads again, wondering why they never reached the end zone at Giants Stadium against a Ram defense that professes to be as elementary as first-grade English.
“We just play a little ‘Pop Warner’ zone,” Ram cornerback LeRoy Irvin said, innocently.
Sure. So why is it that a team with a wide receiving duo of Wesley Walker and Al Toon can’t get into the end zone at least once?
How is it that Freeman McNeil (20 carries for 74 yards, 7 catches for 53) can run until he’s both breathless and pointless?
The Rams will tell you that it’s all in the tease. They seduce an offense with enough trinkets and jewelry to fill a warehouse. They lure you into their parlor with that creampuff-looking defense of theirs and then wham , you get it over the head with a two-by-four.
Ask Walker, who’s still rubbing the knot on his head.
The Jets were driving on the Rams in the first quarter on their way to what seemed to be a sure touchdown and a 7-0 lead.
O’Brien, from the Ram 33-yard line, threw to a wide-open Walker inside the five. Walker took the ball over his left shoulder and turned for the end zone when he was blind-sided by Gray.
Gray, who also got his eighth interception of the year, has been in all the right places this season. He was covering Toon when Walker broke free. Since he was in the neighborhood, Gray moved over and crunched Walker.
Walker didn’t even get a jersey number.
“He turned into me,” Gray said. “I don’t think I could have knocked it (the ball) without him turning to me.”
The ball and Walker parted company, with Nolan Cromwell recovering in the end zone. End of drive.
The Rams will aw-shucks you to death about how simple it all was, but it did change the course of the game.
They took that turnover and turned it into a touchdown.
On second and four at the their own 40, Ram quarterback Jim Everett read a Jet blitz perfectly and threw a pass to Kevin House, who had sneaked behind Jet corner Bobby Humphery. House made a great grab at the Jet 45-yard line and barely outraced the secondary to complete a 60-yard touchdown pass play with 14:09 left in the first half.
House, acquired earlier in the season from Tampa Bay, couldn’t get over the read by Everett, who again wasn’t rattled by two first-quarter interceptions.
The Jets blitzed two linebackers on the play. Center Doug Smith picked up one and Eric (People-see-me-as-just-a runner-but-I-can-pass-block-too) Dickerson picked up the other.
Everett, who completed 9 of 17 passes for 155 yards Sunday, this time picked out an open House.
“Jim has an uncanny maturity at this point of his career,” House said. “He does that naturally. I played last year with another young quarterback--Steve Young--but he didn’t have near the maturity.”
What is this gift of Everett’s?
“Maybe it’s just lucky,” Everett said. “But at Purdue we lived and died with the pass. Things just start to become instinctive.”
Of course, the play was all made possible by the Rams’ homespun defense. “It’s just the same old thing,” Cromwell said. “We’ve been doing it three or four years and people keep wondering how we do it.”
The Ram defense was doing it again on the next series when McNeil of the Jets fumbled the ball to safety Vince Newsome at the New York 23-yard line.
The Rams could only manage three yards on the drive, but did get a 38-yard Mike Lansford field goal out of it with 12:47 left in the second quarter to go into halftime with a 10-0 lead.
It stayed that way until 12:44 remained. Then, Dickerson, who’s still a better runner than a pass blocker, scored on a nifty four-yard, turn-around run. It capped an 84-yard, 13-play drive that was highlighted by a gutsy (for the Rams) 18-yard pass from Everett to David Hill on third and two at the Jet 36.
Dickerson’s touchdown run, the 55th of his Ram career, was made easier by a forgiving 10-man Jet defense that was already playing without stars Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko and Marty Lyons.
Dickerson, who finished with 107 yards in 31 carries, apparently noticed the Jets were a man short on the play. He started the run to the right and then reversed his field and went untouched into the left corner of the end zone.
It put the Rams ahead, 17-0.
The Jet offense, meanwhile, was having a terrible time with that simple-minded Ram defense. They had all these yards and nothing to show for it.
“It’s not that they’re that simple,” O’Brien said. “We just didn’t do a good job.”
Not simple, eh? The Rams blitzed O’Brien only twice in 60 minutes, almost an insulting number in the NFL these days.
The Rams played man-to-man (translation: macho) defense only once, preferring the safety and serenity of their Ram Cover Four zone.
“It’s just a little high school zone,” Irvin said. “I asked our coach if we could play a little man and he just said no.”
The Jets, who haven’t scored a touchdown in eight quarters, could only manage a 25-yard field goal by Pat Leahy with 6:12 remaining.
New York tried frantically to make a game of it. The Jets got the ball back with 3:49 left and O’Brien completed 8 passes for 70 yards on the drive but used up most of the clock doing it.
And when the Jets got near the goal line (they had a first and goal at the five), there were the Rams again with their Do Not Enter sign.
O’Brien’s fourth-down pass intended for Mickey Shuler was tipped and then intercepted by Mike Wilcher in the end zone with 1:06 left.
The Jets were kicking themselves for not scoring, never stopping once to think that a little makeshift, no-chance defense might have had something to do with it.
“We never got frustrated,” said Walker, who had 3 catches for 57 yards. “I think we just beat ourselves.”
Funny. That’s just what the Rams want everyone to think.
