SMALL CHANGE : Rams Shuffle Defense, Get Some Big Results

November’s monthly report on defense hit the coach’s desk at Rams Park like a Dow Jones crash.

Employees sealed stairwells leading to the roof.

Greed, it turned out, was not good. The Rams had recorded 36 sacks through the first 6 games but now, it seemed, the league had caught on to that little scheme.

Cold November winds blew the Rams away. They were 0 for 4 that month and totaled just 3 sacks. They allowed 1,438 yards in 30 days, an average of 360 yards a game. Did we mention the 15 touchdowns they gave up?

This wasn’t defense, it was defenseless. The Eagle had blanded.

And what a cockamamie idea it was anyway, this notion of using inside linebackers as nose tackles and outside linebackers as defensive ends. Who were the Rams kidding?

Suddenly, the Rams were 7-6 and were sliding out a season’s back door. The Chicago Bears were up next on a Monday night. You could almost see defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur swigging coffee and cursing at his desk, wondering how he had ever fallen for such a lame idea in the first place.

But there’s a reason cornerback LeRoy Irvin actually salutes Shurmur whenever Irvin makes a big play.

When Shurmur strides across the Rams’ compound with dark sunglasses on and a cigar wedged in his mouth, you sense that he might have once promised a nation he would return--or at least had seen the newsreels.

A month ago, Shurmur felt as though he had been beaten. A football conservative at heart, a master of containment and vanilla zone defenses, Shurmur was suddenly rushing players to the front and watching them get picked off, one by one.

Linebacker Kevin Greene, who had 10 sacks through 6 games, couldn’t buy one in November, after opponents finally realized that they couldn’t stop him with one blocker.

The coaching staff convened after a 35-24 loss to Denver on Nov. 27 and made some drastic changes. You might have thought they’d scrap the whole rush-happy defense and return to Square 1.

Instead, they forged ahead with an even crazier scheme, shuffling their defensive deck and putting three natural linebackers--two of them rookies--as down linemen in their pass rush defense. Linebacker Greene moved to left end. Rookie Fred Strickland, a 224-pound outside linebacker from Purdue, moved to defensive tackle alongside Gary Jeter, the only natural lineman in the bunch.

The real shocker was the insertion of rookie free-agent linebacker Brett Faryniarz at right defensive end. Some Rams still can’t pronounce his name.

As a group, this was a thin, thin line to cross, averaging just 236 pounds.

“It’s the smallest pass-rush group in the history of Division II sports in college,” Coach John Robinson said. “We’re a tiny bunch of guys. We don’t know how big a gamble it was, but the way things were going, we had to do something.”

The idea was to sacrifice bulk for speed and quickness. Whether the change was as much cosmetic and psychological--change for change’s sake--is not the point. As Robinson said, the Rams had to do something. The loss of safety Vince Newsome with a neck injury in October and linebacker Mel Owens with an ankle injury in November hurt more than the Rams ever imagined.

The move turned the defense and the Rams’ season around. They have won 3 straight since the switch and head into Monday’s wild-card game against Minnesota playing their best defense of the season.

The Rams allowed a total of 26 points in victories over Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco and sacked opposing quarterbacks 12 times. The defense allowed the Bears 114 yards rushing, the Falcons 65 and the 49ers 70.

The defense finished the season with a league-leading 56 sacks, tying the club record. After falling to 19th overall in team defense a year ago, the Rams are back in the top 10.

The new scheme led to 7 sacks of Joe Montana in the first half of last Sunday’s victory over the 49ers.

“We were running through them like tap water through a strainer,” Jeter said. “It was almost scary.”

The return of the rush also helped eliminate the big plays that had been killing the Rams in November.

Sometimes, even Shurmur can’t believe what he’s doing now, and he admits that he might almost be getting hip with the times.

“But I’m not going to let my hair grow long or anything,” he said.

He said changes were made before the Chicago game almost out of desperation. You’d have made them, too, he said.

“There were a lot of reasons it was the right time,” Shurmur said. “We had an extra day to think about what we were going to do because it was a Monday night game.

“And, at 7-6, everyone’s talking about firing all of us. You know how that all goes. So we just said, ‘What the hell.’ We had to come out of it.”

But a defensive line of Greene, Strickland, Jeter and Faryniarz?

“It looks crazy,” he said. “Yeah, it does.”

The old Shurmur would never have gone for it. But the addition of one new wrinkle this season, the Eagle, made trying another easier to swallow.

“We kind of stuck toes in the water with the Eagle,” Shurmur said. “It made us more willing to look at other options. It was all of a sudden having a little more guts to stick our legs deeper in the water. And it’s been better for us. The guys get to play with more abandon. It’s just, ‘Go get ‘em.’ ”

A departure? Sure.

“We were always kind of molded in a framework of success that was not flashy,” he said. “It’s apparent now we’re willing to take more shots.”

More willing, particularly with the emergence of the rookie Strickland, the team’s second-round choice last spring.

Strickland got off to a slow start but is charging fast, so fast that the Rams don’t know what to do with him. So they’re doing everything. The 6-foot 2-inch, 244-pound Strickland, whom Robinson calls a budding superstar, is playing outside linebacker, inside linebacker, nose tackle and defensive tackle. He also takes on receivers in some pass coverages.

“He’s the new man on the block and has a chance to be an impact player,” Robinson said. “He flies around on the football field, and you see how he’s a big guy. We’ve got a lot of guys who, when we get off the bus, everyone keeps looking on the bus to see where the really big guys are on defense. Fred is a big guy and a fast guy.”

The biggest problem for Strickland is trying to figure out which group meeting to attend.

“He’s playing as many places as we can put him,” Shurmur said. “That’s a hell of a mental burden. But he’s carrying it well. He’s got talent, is a smart guy and knows how to play the game. The only thing he lacks is experience.”

Not anymore.

Still, Shurmur isn’t sold on his defense. He never is. He cringes when anyone mentions that his troops might be on a roll. He knows too well the story of Custer.

Besides, Shurmur still leans to the right when he can. This season, he just decided to throw away an old tweed coat.

“It has been a lot of fun,” he said. “There were times within our limited package of being frustrated that we had nothing else to go to. Now, we just keep pumping it in there and changing it up.

“For conservative old dogs like me, it’s harder. Lots of guys are off the wall, have 10 million ideas, but no base. Me, I’m continually working for new ideas but no, it hasn’t been easy for me.”

Ram Notes

Minnesota quarterback Wade Wilson met with Coach Jerry Burns on Wednesday to discuss the friction between the quarterback and offensive coordinator Bob Schnelker. “Everything’s fine,” Wilson told reporters. Wilson was upset after being replaced by Tommy Kramer in the second half of Monday night’s game against Chicago. Wilson was recently selected to the NFC Pro Bowl team. . . . The team will depart for Minnesota on Christmas Eve. Owner Georgia Frontiere is throwing a Christmas party for the team at the hotel on Sunday. . . . The Rams are the hottest team entering the playoffs, having won their final 3 regular-season games. The Rams also have been a better team on the road this year (6-2) than at Anaheim Stadium (4-4).