Rams Pick Up Where 49ers Leave Off, 13-12 : Last L.A. Drive Has Kick to It

The game plan was circa 1985, a slow-bleed, low-ball strategy that keeps you kicking in the end.

The Rams watched another team sack Joe Montana eight times last week and lose by 10 points. So they caged their Eagle defense, called off the blitz, dusted off their zone and dropped their gloves. The Rams put the highlight reel material on hold and allowed Montana and the San Francisco 49ers to take them apart in little pieces, never allowing the big chunks.

It was the Rams’ answer to mad-dogging defenses and runaway scores. They stayed back, hit hard, waited for a break and hoped kicker Mike Lansford would be there in the end.

He was. Lansford, battling a stiff head wind and, gulp, the curse of not having missed a game-winning kick since high school, sneaked a 26-yard field goal just inside the right upright to give the Rams a 13-12 victory over the 49ers before 64,250, the largest crowd ever to watch football at Candlestick Park.

In the last three minutes, the Rams moved mountains. They stole a game from the world champions and bee-lined toward the airport.

It started with Kevin Greene pouncing on Tom Rathman’s fumble with 2:59 left, just as the 49ers seemed ready to deliver the death blow. Rathman, who didn’t fumble all last year, left the ball on the Ram 19-yard line. It sat there like a gift from the heavens.

In the 72-yard drive that ensued, quarterback Jim Everett stole a page from Montana, the reigning king of story-makers. Everett remembered his critics along the way, the ones who remind him daily of his place in history in relationship to Montana’s.

Everett muffed two last-minute chances for victories last season with interceptions in the other team’s end zone, whereas Montana seemed to do OK on his march in the Super Bowl.

“This was big-time,” Everett said of Sunday’s game-winning drive. “A lot of people wrote last year that we couldn’t win the big game in the end. Not just me, but the team. And we won in a fashion that the 49ers usually win.”

After Rathman’s fumble, Everett worked quickly, hitting Flipper Anderson for 19 yards and a first down to the Rams’ 44 at the two-minute warning.

Then it was Everett to tight end Pete Holohan for 31 yards to the 49ers’ 25 with 1:40 left.

With the gusting winds, the Rams wanted to move closer for Lansford, so instead of sitting on the ball on third down at the 27, Everett dumped the ball to Holohan, who found a dead spot in the secondary and plodded his way to the 11 with 22 seconds left.

Lansford dipped a finger in his mouth and checked the wind. It was blowing left to right. He asked the offense to set the ball up on the left hash mark.

You think a field goal isn’t a science? Holohan, the drive’s hero and Lansford’s holder, ordered up a Sunday special from snapper Mike McDonald.

“McDonald can give you the laces away, so I don’t have to spin it,” Holohan said. “He can do it almost 100% of the time. It’s almost uncanny.”

McDonald shot the ball back and Holohan spotted it. Lansford’s kick tried to dodge the right upright.

“It was going right,” Holohan said. “It was as close as it looked.”

Lansford missed a game-winning kick once. He was a sophomore at Alhambra High School and it’s still a running joke between Lansford and then-holder Mike Hull. Lansford claims Hull gave him a bad spot back in 1974.

Now 31, Lansford continues to dodge a kicker’s most frightening bullet--the game-winning missed. He has made every clutch kick in his career. It began with a game-winner in 1983 against New Orleans to send the Rams to the playoffs and continued Sunday against the 49ers, in a win so big as to bring owner Georgia Frontiere into the locker room.

“Everyone asks me to rate my kicks,” Lansford said. “I think they’re all tied for first.”

Piece of cake, right?

“People always ask me if it gets any easier,” he said. “It doesn’t. I’ll be bald at 40 and have ulcers, but I’ll enjoy it.”

Lansford has had a lot on his mind lately. He’s still waiting for the Rams to renegotiate his contract, and only came to camp at this year’s salary of $195,000 on that condition.

He can only hope Sunday’s kick speeds up negotiations.

Lansford at least left management in fine spirits with his kick, which lifted the Rams into sole possession of first place in the NFC West, a spot seemingly owned by the 49ers for much of the decade.

The Rams did it the old-fashioned way. The trend in the league these days is gambling defenses and deep passes. You hope you win, 41-38. The Rams fell into the same trap in recent weeks, allowing defenses nearly 400 yards per game in three victories.

But after Montana dissected Buddy Ryan’s 46 defense last week in a five-touchdown performance against Philadelphia, the Rams decided it might be better to re-invent the wheel.

Getting into a shootout with Montana, they reasoned, was not a sound theory.

“We’ve got a lot of film in the last eight years to prove that’s not necessarily the best way to play that team,” defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur said. “You don’t fool Joe much. You just want to get him off rhythm.”

The Rams did it with a soft zone defense. They kept the 49er receivers in front of them all day and made them earn every point. Montana finished with 227 yards passing but and had only four field goals to show for it.

“It was quite an accomplishment holding them to no touchdowns,” Rams coach John Robinson said. “It’s been a long time since that’s happened.”

All-pro receiver Jerry Rice was held without a reception after the first quarter, thanks in part to the deep coverage by corner LeRoy Irvin, returning from a 30-day substance-abuse suspension.

How hard was it?

On their first drive of the third quarter, the 49ers, trailing, 10-9, used 12 plays and consumed 8:22 on a drive that ended with nothing after Mike Cofer’s 41-yard field goal attempt sailed wide left.

After three quarters of scratching and scraping, the 49ers finally took the lead, 12-10, on a 17-yard Cofer goal with 8:53 left. But even that one took 14 plays and 7:35.

Keep the bleeding to a minimum, Shurmur ordered.

Robinson felt the field goal was tainted anyhow, convinced his team’s preceding drive was stopped short when the referees blew a call on 49er nose tackle Michael Carter, who appeared to jump off-sides on a crucial third-and-one situation for the Rams.

The Rams would get their break, however, when Rathman fumbled deep in Ram territory.

“I feel I should take the blame for the loss because I did fumble,” Rathman said. “I had set a goal for myself to not fumble all year and here that goal is gone already in the fourth game. I had gone all last year without fumbling. Somebody swatted it out when I was getting up to the hole. I guess I just didn’t have it put away.”

The Rams were playing for one or two key 49er mistakes all along.

San Francisco made its first on defense in the second quarter when Everett and Flipper Anderson exploited a Ronnie Lott-less secondary and connected on a 65-yard scoring pass play.

The 49ers offense would take longer to break. Finally, however, Rathman obliged, and Greene moved in for the kill.

“When they were driving on us, we were screaming, ‘Somebody make the play, somebody make the play!’ ” Greene said. “They were in our area but we were not conceding anything. I just saw the ball and fell on it. I don’t know what happened. It was a great game. We needed this game. And now we’re flying.”

Ram Notes

Greg Bell finished with 33 yards in 14 carries. . . . Jim Everett completed 16 of 25 passes for 250 yards. . . . The Rams held Jerry Rice to two receptions for 36 yards. . . . Linebacker Frank Stams suffered a bruised left thigh in the second half and did not return.