Rams’ Greene Gets a Leg Up on Raiders : Safety Leads to Five Points, Second Guesses

Steve Beuerlein knows this much about the safety that sunk the Raiders:

--He was tripped.

--The Raiders were ripped.

--Worse yet, it should have never happened.

After that, Beuerlein’s memory runs short on facts. “I’m just going to have to look at the films and see what happened,” he said.

Look at the films? Look at the scoreboard--that says it all. What was once a 10-10 third-quarter tie suddenly became a 12-10 Ram lead. Then it became a 15-10 lead. Then it became academic as the Rams went on to defeat the Raiders, 22-17, at the Coliseum Sunday.

And all because Beuerlein’s size 14s collided with Ram linebacker Kevin Greene’s right leg.

Your replay:

With the ball on the Raider 4, Beuerlein dropped back to pass. The Raiders needed 8 yards for a first down. Turns out what they really needed was another set of offensive linemen and maybe a referee who could tell a trip from a sack.

As the pass blocking began to cave in, Beuerlein, already stuck in the middle of the end zone, made a dash toward open space. “I looked ahead of me and I saw nothing but grass,” he said.

But Greene was there, doing what he could to escape from Raider right tackle Steve Wright. A thump later, Beuerlein was sprawled face down in the Raider end zone, the recipient of a strange and probably illegal tackle.

The safety not only gave the Rams a two-point lead, it also gave them the ball back, courtesy of a required Raider punt. Seven plays later, Mike Lansford kicked a 46-yard field goal. That meant one suspect safety equaled five precious Ram points.

According to Harry Brubaker, a National Football League official stationed in the Coliseum press box, a defensive player cannot deliberately trip a ballcarrier.

But game officials detected no such wrongdoing, or simply decided the contact had been accidental, perhaps the result of a Wright block. Whatever the case, Beuerlein was down, as were the Raiders at game’s end.

Not everyone agreed, of course. Raider Coach Mike Shanahan said he didn’t have any trouble distinguishing a trip from tackle--and he was 40 yards away on the sideline.

“It looked obvious from where I was,” he said. “It looked like a trip.”

Beuerlein didn’t know the particulars, except that one moment he was up, the next moment he was down. Maybe, someone suggested, he had stubbed one his king-size feet on the end zone turf.

“I’ve got big feet but that’s not what that was,” he said.

No, it was a leg or “an awful big arm,” Beuerlein said.

“I know that I was tripped. It’s just a matter of how it was done: if he (Greene) was just laying there or if he was intentionally trying to trip me. (If so), that should have been a penalty. But whoever it was, it was a heck of a good play.”

Don’t try telling Greene that. He almost disavowed any knowledge of the safety, telling reporters to instead point their note books toward Ram defensive end Gary Jeter, owner of five sacks Sunday.

“Gary Jeter’s the star,” he insisted.

But Greene’s safety was the mystery waiting to be solved. And Greene almost solved it, until he caught himself in mid-sentence.

“How big of a play is it, you know, when you’re locked up with a guy and you see the quarterback escaping, you try to get over to him, you stick something. . . you try to get your body over in front of him and you trip him up,” Greene said. “That’s no big play to me. Shoot.”

So what was it, Kev? Sticking something out, or getting your body in front? Greene will never tell.

Truth be known, Beuerlein said he blamed himself for the whole thing, anyway. The way he saw it, safeties are no-no’s, a quarterback’s mortal enemy.

“I shouldn’t have gotten sacked in the end zone,” he said. “I figured I could just run five or six yards for the first down.”

What he didn’t figure was that Greene and his leg would be there waiting for him.