ANALYSIS : For Rams, Turnabout’s Fair Play : There Was More to It Than Getting Rid of Dickerson

Easily explaining the course of the Rams’ season would be similar to easily explaining the personalities of Sybil. In fact, if the Rams were but one man, he’d perhaps still be lying on a couch somewhere, sorting through ink blots.

So tell us again how a team that was 1-7 and buried to its upper lip in dirt on Nov. 8 could breathe freely enough to win five straight games and tune itself back into the playoff picture? Tell us with a straight face.

“We’ve all been exposed to an extreme turnabout emotionally,” Coach John Robinson said this week. “There’ve been some traumatic events happening this year, right here in Anaheim. I’m sure it’s been interesting for people to observe--the ups, the downs, the struggles, fighting back, all those things we’ve gone through.”

So who gets the movie rights? The Rams, remember, will always have London in August, when former forlorn star Eric Dickerson looked out upon the Thames and demanded to be paid his worth, pound for pound.

There were a hundred other diversions, not excluding two early-season losses, the mysterious disappearance of coordinator Ernie Zampese’s offense, an ensuing players’ strike, Robinson’s infamous list of 13, the trading of Dickerson, the berating of Dickerson, more bitter losses, cornerback LeRoy Irvin’s alleged malingering, Irvin’s suspension, and ultimately, Irvin’s return to grace and glory.

“He’s just been fantastic,” Robinson said of Irvin after Sunday’s 33-0 win over the Atlanta Falcons.

The same Irvin who was on the line to U-Haul a month ago?

Yes, the Rams have almost come full circle. And coaches, like elephants, tend not to forget what the circus floor smells like.

“If you go back, there were many statements made by a lot of people that this franchise destroyed itself,” Robinson said. “That it self-destructed and we’d never live again and it would be five years before the Rams were any kind of football team. I read that. People said that. And I wouldn’t quarrel with that at the time because we were playing bad.”

The Rams were as low and soggy as delta swampland after a 31-14 loss to the New Orleans Saints Nov. 8 at Anaheim Stadium. The defeat dropped the team to 1-7 and out of sight.

But since, and without Dickerson, the Rams have risen to 6-7, outscoring opponents in that span, 162-69. In four of those five games, the Rams scored more than 30 points, a feat accomplished only once in all of 1986.

In that period, Jim Everett’s quarterback rating jumped from 50 to 70.7, and Dickerson’s replacement, Charles White, gained 723 yards and scored 8 touchdowns.

In the last five weeks, the Rams averaged 392 yards a game on offense. In their first five games, not counting strike games, they averaged 273.2 yards an outing.

So how did the Rams come up with the extra 119 yards a game?

Robinson said it has just been a matter of going back to the basics:

“We just said, ‘Hey look, we’re the same people that we’ve always been. We’re just not doing some of the little simple detail things as well as we can.’

“We said, ‘Don’t think about the amount of criticism you’re taking. Don’t worry about that, that comes and goes with the wind.’ And we have begun to take care of those individual things--the tackling, the blocking. Those are the things that are turning our team around.”

There are other theories, some obvious and others subliminal. Some players suggested that the problems that plagued the Rams affected the team the same way prolonged dissension would affect any company.

DICKERSON DEPARTS

Is it any surprise that the trade of Dickerson on Halloween was soon followed by a Ram resurgence? One player, who asked that his name not be used, said that Dickerson’s departure was almost cathartic.

“It was a huge relief,” he said. “Especially for the offense. Now it knew exactly what to do instead of having to wonder whether Eric was going to play or not, or whether he was going to even practice.

“You’re out there working your (rear) off and you see a guy over on the sideline in his sunglasses, and you’re trying to figure how this guy is going to get ready to play. I know it affected the linemen, who were busting their butts to open holes for a guy sitting over there doing whatever he was doing.”

How bad did Dickerson want a trade?

“Eric would say it out loud in meetings, in the locker room,” the player said. “He made it known.

“When you’re in there, trying to do your job, and see that the most valuable player on the team doesn’t want to be there, it makes it difficult to get motivated. It’s the best thing they ever did, getting rid of him.”

And although the natural inclination might have been for the team to fall after the loss of its star, it was also human nature to want desperately to succeed without him.

The offensive line, in particular, seemed to have something to prove after Dickerson left.

“That’s a big thing for us,” guard Tom Newberry said. “Most people thought that when Eric went to Indianapolis, the rushing title would follow him. But unless he has two big games, the title’s going to stay right here.”

White, with 1,213 yards for the season, leads runner-up Dickerson by 236 yards.

It was also important that the line believed in White, which it did.

“The linemen never considered Charles White a backup, talent-wise,” Newberry said. “We’ve proved that it’s part us, part Charlie and part the system. They all contribute to our success.”

Other key factors were also converging at the time Dickerson went to Indianapolis.

The Ram offense under Zampese, kept mostly on ice in the exhibition season and allowed to stay frozen during the strike, has finally begun to thaw.

“The strike didn’t help any,” Everett said. “I think we could have got this thing going a lot earlier if not for the strike.”

It also didn’t help that wide receivers Ron Brown and Henry Ellard, keys to the pass offense, missed so much practice time because of nagging injuries that they were often ineffective in games.

“It totally threw Jim’s timing off,” one player said.

Ellard and Brown have been practicing lately. In fact, in his last three games, Ellard has 18 receptions for 350 yards, a 19.4-yard average, and 3 touchdowns. And although Brown still drops passes, he is catching enough of them now to make teams at least respect his great speed.

The emergence of the passing game has taken enormous pressure off the running game, which in the past could always count on facing eight-man defensive fronts to stop Dickerson.

“If you were to ask me what’s the difference other than change (at running back) from No. 29 to 33, I’d say it’s that they’re not overloading on the line,” Robinson said.

“It’s very simple to say Dickerson only got 19 yards (last week) because he doesn’t have that line anymore. That’s not true, though he said a couple weeks ago he had a better line (in Indianapolis) and better players. But a lot of times it’s the guys on the other side and how they align.”

FOR THE LOVE OF CHARLIE

Naturally, the new balance on offense has made life easy for White, who has merely danced through holes wider than a mile. Uh-uh. That’s not fair, either.

White’s 339 yards gained during the strike should be put in proper perspective, but he has since proven time and again that neither he nor his season is a fluke. Also consider that White hardly touched the ball in the first two weeks of the season (when Dickerson still roamed the backfield), carrying only twice for nine yards.

“It’s curious that people are saying that anybody could run behind our line,” Robinson said. “Yet, three weeks or a month ago, we were the dumbest people in the world for allowing the one great runner in the world to get away.

“What I’m trying to get at is, certainly Charlie deserves credit for what he’s doing; he’s leading the league by a significant margin.”

It has been a happy re-marriage between back and linemen. To them, Charles White represents a blue-collar common man. White will risk his body for them, and they in turn will do the same for him.

“It’s much easier for a line to work for guy that they truly respect, and that’s what it has in Charles,” one player said.

“It’s not that we didn’t like Eric, but he wasn’t one of us. He was a different entity. At first he wasn’t, but at the end he was a whole other part of the Rams.”

HEY, WHO DO WE PLAY NEXT?

Not to be overlooked in the Rams’ turnaround is their strength of schedule, or lack thereof. Only one team they played in the streak, Washington, has a better-than-.500 record for the season. The others--St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Detroit and Atlanta--have a cumulative record of 16-36.

“I think the real story is the teams that we’ve been playing,” one Ram said. “Detroit, by far, had the absolute worst defensive backfield I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Still, in the past, the Rams have had trouble putting away the easiest patsies. Tampa Bay took them to overtime last season. The Rams sneaked by Detroit, 14-10, in 1986.

Yes, the Rams have come a long way since Eric Dickerson.

Ram Notes Dallas Coach Tom Landry said Thursday that Steve Pelluer would start at quarterback against the Rams Monday night at Anaheim Stadium. . . . Dallas running back Herschel Walker said his decision not to play college football for John Robinson at USC came down to a coin flip. “I flipped a coin between three schools: Clemson, USC and Georgia,” Walker said. The coin, as you know, came up on the third side--Georgia. Is that a true story? “Yes sir,” Walker said. Walker, from Johnson County High School in Wrightsville, Ga., was the national high school back of the year in 1979.

Cowboy officials are taking special precautions for Landry, who received death threats during a Monday night game against the Rams in Anaheim last season. “It would be foolish for us to ignore what happened last year,” Larry Wansley, the Cowboys’ director of counseling services, told the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

Landry left the game in the third quarter after Anaheim police received an anonymous call claiming there was a man in the stands who was going to shoot Landry. Landry, refusing to wear a bullet-proof vest, returned in the fourth quarter. Is Landry bringing a vest this time? “I hope I don’t need it,” he said from Dallas. “I almost need it more here.” The Cowboys have lost four straight games.

Ram defensive end Shawn Miller (ankle injury) practiced for the first time in weeks Thursday and may play Monday night. Miller last played against Cleveland Oct. 26. . . . About 1,300 tickets remained Thursday for the Dallas game, which needs to be a sellout before 6 p.m. today if the local television blackout is to be lifted. . . . The Rams released one back, David Adams, and signed another, fullback Lakei Heimuli of Brigham Young. . . . Cornerback LeRoy Irvin missed Thursday’s practice with the flu. Really.