Even If Rams Aren’t Perfect, Their Record Is
The National Football League’s only undefeated team can’t stand to look at a stat sheet anymore. It hurts too much. Not as much as losing, though, so the Rams continue to endure the pain of explaining victories.
They put away the Atlanta Falcons, 26-14, Sunday for their fifth consecutive victory in front of 52,182 at Anaheim Stadium.
They did it by allowing opposing quarterback Chris Miller carte blanche, and he fired it up 39 times for a career-high 340 yards.
If the Rams were having another yard sale--and they were--Miller wanted to be first one on the driveway.
In fact, he may have knocked the Rams’ 26th-ranked pass defense all the way to dead last before wishing them well on their march toward the Super Bowl.
There’s something happening here; what it is isn’t clear.
“Three hundred yards,” Ram cornerback Jerry Gray said. “That’s a lot to me. I’m grateful to be 5-0, but 300 yards? How can they do that? You have to face reality, but do we have to let them catch it? No.”
The reality is that teams are not even bothering to run on the Rams anymore. The Falcons, who have a Pro Bowl back in John Settle, ran only 15 times Sunday. Settle carried seven.
So, the Rams are content to sit back in their zone and give up everything but points.
“It’s weird,” Coach John Robinson said. “I don’t know why it’s happening. . . . We’re being forced into more contain defenses because teams are throwing almost all the time. But we’ve given up two touchdowns in the last two weeks.”
In other words, keep those yards and letters coming.
This impressive group of losing quarterbacks through five weeks has pierced the Rams’ secondary for 299, 266, 335, 227 and 340 yards respectively, though respect apparently has little to do with it.
“We have never been enamored with statistics,” defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur said.
Good thing. What Shurmur and his players have done is lull opponents to the brink of victory before pulling the carpet with the big play.
Two weeks ago, it was Green Bay’s Brent Fullwood fumbling on the goal line. Last week, Alvin Wright popped the ball loose from 49er fullback Tom Rathman to start the game-winning drive.
Sunday, the Rams used two touchdown passes from Jim Everett, four Mike Lansford field goals and four key defensive stands to save the game.
Corner LeRoy Irvin started it in the first quarter when he intercepted Miller’s pass at the Ram 12-yard line to stop a Falcon rally.
Late in the half, trailing 17-7, Atlanta chose to go for the score on fourth and goal at the Ram one, giving up what seemed a chip-shot field goal. Settle was stuffed by Doug Reed and Co. and was left only to wonder.
Then, down by 12 with 10 minutes left, the Falcons tried again on fourth and six at the Ram 34, but this time Irvin batted down a pass intended for George Thomas.
Now, Irvin isn’t a head coach or anything, but even he had to wonder what the Falcons were thinking.
“If Atlanta goes for the field goals, it’s a seven-point game with time to go,” he said. “It’s their decision to make, but I think if they would have gotten the field goals, it might have been a different game.”
Judgments can get hazy when you lose as often as Atlanta, which dropped to 1-4 overall and 0-5 against the Rams in the last five tries.
With 5:18 left, the Falcons had no choice but to go for six on another fourth down at the Rams’ goal line. This time, the Rams’ George Bethune stopped Gene Lang short of the goal line.
Reed thinks the Falcons may have finally gotten the message. He figures there is a reason teams haven’t been running on this defense.
“Obviously, we’ve been stuffing people,” he said. “You talk about all the sacks, but we’re stopping guys and taken most teams out of the game.”
And it’s not as though teams such as the Falcons are going to find their touch inside the Rams’ five.
“We tend to take it personally,” Reed said. “If you think you can get it, well, just try.”
The Falcons did, and failed, and lost. So what’s new?
“It was our inability to make our fourth-down plays,” Falcon Coach Marion Campbell said.
Campbell thought the Rams’ first goal-line stand with 6:14 left in the first half was the killer.
“It was a big play, huge,” he said. “Had we gotten it, it would have been a different ballgame. Instead, they got three points out of it, and they got jacked because of it.”
Meanwhile, the Rams’ offense cruised along so efficiently that Lansford field goals of 48, 35, 27, and 42 yards almost seemed disappointing conclusions. After all, quarterback Jim Everett took his team 68 yards on the Rams’ first possession with relative ease, the drive ending on a 13-yard scoring pass to tight end Pete Holohan.
The Falcons tied it up on a nine-yard scoring pass from Miller to Shawn Collins, but the Rams were unmoved.
Lansford sent the Rams ahead for good with 2:22 left in the first quarter with a 48-yarder.
And the Rams mounted their most impressive drive after Irvin’s interception. The highlight was Everett’s leading block on Greg Bell’s 29-yard run down the left sideline. The play was designed to go right, but when Bell changed directions, Everett headed downfield and put a solid helmet on safety Evan Cooper.
“I’m sure it wasn’t a pretty sight,” Everett said. “But I’m dangerous in the open field. Any time I pitch the ball I look for the cut back. I won’t take anybody out, but I’ll nibble on his ankles a bit.”
Bell felt a twinge in his hamstring on the run and didn’t return for the second half, finishing with 62 yards in 10 carries. The Rams didn’t take any chances with Bell, who wants to be 100% when he returns for the first time to Buffalo next Monday night.
“I was headed for a big day,” Bell said. “But the next 11 games are more important than one big game.”
The Rams drove on without him, thanks to the pass-catch team of Everett and Henry Ellard, who might as well be bound by string these days.
Ellard had seven catches and 150 receiving yards in the first half alone, but none more important than a 25-yard grab on fourth and six at the Falcon 33.
The Rams might have chosen a safer pass, but you have to consider Everett-to-Ellard these days. Everett dropped the ball in nicely between two defenders, and Ellard had only one real problem with the pass.
“I didn’t see it until it came from behind the defender,” Ellard said. “I didn’t see Jim or the ball.”
The ball ended up in Ellard’s hands, though, and two plays later, Everett rolled right, sucked linebacker Aundray Bruce into thinking run, and then dropped a nice touch-pass over Bruce’s head to Robert Delpino, who one-handed the ball for the score to put the Rams up, 17-7.
Ellard finished with eight catches for 165 yards, and not even Atlanta rookie cornerback Deion Sanders could stop him, though he stayed pretty close on one 14-yard completion.
Of Everett’s 16 completions, half went to Ellard. Everett finished with 290 yards passing.
Chris Miller finished with a ton of passing yards of his own, but fewer memories.
“I think we used just about every pass play we have,” Miller said. “I’m pretty sore from throwing a lot.”
Too bad the Rams don’t get Dan Marino this year.
Ram Notes
Irv Pankey’s bad back kept out of his second consecutive game. Robert Cox started at left tackle. . . . Damone Johnson sprained his right ankle in the second half and didn’t return. Fred Strickland sprained his right knee and missed the fourth quarter. The Rams reported that linebacker George Bethune suffered a hip pointer. . . . Kevin Greene had both sacks of quarterback Chris Miller for minus 25 yards. . . . Deion Sanders displayed some of his speed when he chased down Ron Brown after a 74-yard kickoff return to open the second half. . . . Sunday was the fourth time in his career that Mike Lansford has kicked four field goals in a game.
* KICKING UP A STORM
Ram Mike Lansford makes four field goals and two extra points. Gene Wojciechowski’s story, Page 11.
