Rams Rumble With Bad News Bears
Barring a scoreless overtime tie--and wouldn’t that be something--a winner shall emerge from today’s convergence of losing streaks when the Rams and Chicago Bears compare bruises and notes at Soldier Field.
The Bears have dropped three in row, the Rams two.
Who’s counting? Everyone in Chicago, for sure. Oprah. Butkus. Siskel.Ebert. With Ram fans you never can tell--they might not know about their team yet.
This is as shocking as it has been in a while for Chicago fans. Last week, Mike Ditka’s Bears were kicked out of first place for the first time since early 1984, ending a streak of 86 consecutive regular-season weeks of either sharing or leading outright the NFC’s Central Division. Eighty-six weeks .
Some hold Ditka responsible, naturally, but he says it has been a team effort, in good times and bad.
“I’m not going to sit back and say, ‘It’s a three-game losing streak for me,’ ” or, It’s the first time in five years,” he said. “That has nothing to do with anything. The only way you stop losing is by winning. We found that out a long time ago, back in 1984.”
But it’s the way these teams have been losing and, granted, both teams remain only a game out of first place.
Rock ‘em, sock ‘em football? You must be thinking of another generation. How about the league’s 25th-best defense, the Rams, vs. No. 26, the Bears? It doesn’t get more porous than this, even with Mike Singletary as one team’s middle linebacker.
The network has rushed its first announcing team out to cover this one, although John Madden’s arms are likely to tire some in the third quarter from diagramming touchdown plays.
It’s difficult for some purists to accept the words Rams, Bears and bad defense in the same sentence. Those teams have for so long represented all that’s good in stopping others.
But this season the Bears have already given up 42 points to Tampa Bay in one game. Green Bay scored 38 against the Rams and lost. There were days, not so long ago, when you marked W next to the Bays on your schedule and moved on.
The trouble spots here aren’t exactly great revelations. The Rams and Bears realized in training camp that they needed a few breaks on defense to make a run at their division titles. Bone breaks weren’t what they had in mind. So thin were their defensive cores, that after starters, there remain only beginners.
So what happened? The Bears lost starting defensive tackle Dan Hampton to another knee surgery, linebacker Jim Morrissey to a lacerated kidney, all-pro defensive end Richard Dent to a thigh bruise and safety Shaun Gayle to a chest injury. Ditka said earlier this week that Gayle desperately needs a game to recover, although Dent is expected to find his way back to the field today.
“Other people get injuries too,” Ditka said. “I made the statement that if we could stay intact defensively, at the key positions, I thought we could be a team to be reckoned with.”
The Rams were also tinkering with a delicate defensive balance, hoping that inside linebackers Larry Kelm and Fred Strickland could avoid injuries long enough to make the Eagle defense work.
Kelm hasn’t played a down this season because of a serious foot injury, and Strickland, who had just made it back after arthroscopic knee surgery, is down again with what could be a severe ankle sprain.
The Rams hadn’t planned on presenting a work-in-progress defense this season, but that’s what it has become. Three players--Mel Owens, Frank Stams and Bill Hawkins, are playing new positions. Owens and the rookie Stams have been moved from outside linebackers to inside. Hawkins, a rookie from Miami, was a defensive end in college. He’s a defensive tackle now.
“We had all the things happen to us bad that put us in this situation,” said Fritz Shurmur, the Rams’ defensive coordinator. “We have a design that couldn’t be effective because all these parts are missing. We have guys playing in positions for the first time, who had never played those positions at all--anywhere. As a result, they’re on Square 1. We have so many guys on Square 1 they haven’t been able to think down the road.”
So is today the beginning of the road for one team and the end for another?
As the Bears struggle, the Minnesota Vikings threaten to pull away since getting tailback Herschel Walker. Oh, and Minnesota’s defense is ranked first.
“They were a great team before they got Walker,” Ditka said. “Honestly, the furthest thing from my mind right now are Herschel Walker and the Minnesota Vikings. Time will tell you what happens. I’m worried more about Greg Bell than I am Herschel Walker.”
That should tell you something.
Ram Notes
The Rams won’t make a final decision on Greg Bell’s status until after pregame warmups, but Gaston Green is expected to start at tailback. Bell strained his lower back in Wednesday’s practice. The Rams are 4-1 against the Bears in the John Robinson era, although it’s a pretty big 1. Robinson’s only loss to Mike Ditka was a 24-0 defeat in the 1985 NFC championship game. . . . Robinson, never shy about supplying interesting notes, came up with this one recently: Since the San Francisco 49ers’ start of 6-5 last season, the team has gone 17-3, including playoff victories and this year’s exhibition season. All three losses have been to the Rams.
Robinson is hoping that the Bears will be flat after Monday night’s loss to the Cleveland Browns. “You want them to play like we did last Sunday,” he said. . . . After questioning Mike Tomczak’s toughness in a conference-call hook-up to Ram reporters on Wednesday, Ditka turned around the next day and named Tomczak his starting quarterback against the Rams. Why not Jim Harbaugh? Here’s a guess: In the Bears’ 20-3 loss to the Rams last year, Harbaugh, in his first NFL start, completed 11 of 30 passes for 108 yards with two interceptions.
