Vikings Should Provide a Stiff Test for the Ram Offensive Line

There have been no death-watch whispers about the Rams’ offensive line in years--and for good reason. They have produced six consecutive 1,000-yard rushers and kept most of their quarterbacks out of intensive care units.

So much for resumes, but how else do you measure linemen? They squat, sweat, pump iron, grunt, pick up their paychecks and reside in a world of complicated schemes and blocking techniques, too intricate to explore or homogenize into bite-sized statistics.

However, when Jim Everett gets sacked 10 times in three games and the Rams rush for 59, 53 and 84 yards in consecutive weeks, you figure that something is up. It’s called a three-game losing streak, for one thing, but it also points a gnarly finger at the offensive line, almost a sacrilege in these parts.

So what gives, besides the pass protection?

“I don’t see any big disasters,” line coach Hudson Houck said Thursday. “I don’t see us very far off, honestly.”

It hasn’t helped that the Rams are catching some great pass rushers in bad moods lately. It started Oct. 16 in Buffalo, with star sacker Bruce Smith, whose defense had taken a media pounding before the Rams rolled into town one Monday night.

Smith, you remember, awoke from his slumber and ultimately chased Everett and the Rams to their last-minute doom.

Last week, Chicago’s all-pro defensive end Richard Dent was taking serious heat for sitting out the week before, after being struck on the thigh by a shopping cart. Fill in your own joke here, everyone in Chicago did.

Dent didn’t appreciate the negative feedback, so he played like Superman against the Rams, sticking it to Greg Bell’s chest on one spectacular tackle and to the rest of the Rams in general.

This week, the stakes are higher, and the pass rush is even hotter in Minnesota, where the Rams go nose-to-nose with the league’s premier defense and its leading sacker, Keith Millard.

The Vikings lead the National Football League in sacks with 42, a pace that could eclipse the league record of 72 in a season.

Houck calls Al Noga, Henry Thomas, Millard and Chris Doleman “the best down-four group in the league, in my opinion.”

Millard, at right defensive tackle, represents the defense’s pulse, at the same time raising pulse rates in opposing backfields around the league. With 13 sacks at midseason, Millard is on a pace to break Mark Gastineau’s season record of 22, set in 1984.

Houck is so impressed with the Viking front four that he sometimes likes to cue up film of the unit and watch just for fun.

Millard, who bounces around on defense from one offensive guard to another, poses the biggest problems because of his tenacious style and cat-quick moves.

Luckily for the Rams, he will line up mainly over left guard Tom Newberry in a matchup of consensus first-team all-pros--perhaps the best two players in the league at their respective positions.

Newberry is a better run-blocker than pass protector, but he has held his own against Millard in four meetings the past two seasons.

“Hasn’t got a sack on me yet,” Newberry said.

Newberry and Millard are actually on good terms, having met and mingled at last year’s Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

Newberry lives for challenges such as these.

“You get more motivated,” he said. “He’s the best player at his position in the league. It’s knowing you’re one-on-one and you’ve got to stop him.”

Millard is one of the quickest players in the league off the ball, so quick that sometimes it seems he knows the snap count.

“I’ve played all right against him,” Newberry said. “If I get him off balance, I’ve got a good chance, because I outweigh him by quite a bit (285 pounds to 263). The key is getting off on the snap and getting in good position so he doesn’t get upfield on you in the pass rush. In the run, it’s staying balanced, so anywhere he goes, you can get on him and push him.”

This doesn’t exactly add up to the best week for the Ram line to break out of its slump, but Newberry thinks the unit has no choice.

“On a personal basis for the line, it’s an ego thing,” Newberry explained. “We want to build up our egos by having a good game, and I think we’re set on having a good game this week.”

Newberry said there is nothing wrong with the line that a good game against a great defense can’t cure.

Is there something seriously wrong here?

“No, nothing at all in fact,” Newberry said. “We’ve just been in situations where teams have been able to tee off on us, and that’s a tough spot to be in. What we have to do as an offensive line is do better on first and second down, so we’re not put in that situation.”

Houck said he is not worried about the line’s pass-blocking, because the 10 sacks in three games are not all attributable to his line.

But the rushing numbers are disconcerting. The Rams haven’t had a 100-yard rushing game since Greg Bell ran for 221 yards against Green Bay on Sept. 24.

“There’s no question we’ve got to do a better job (with) the run,” Houck said. “That’s a legitimate criticism. And you can’t say teams are stacking against the run, because we throw so much.”

That, too, explains a lot. Remember when Ram tailbacks carried 30 times a game? In his last five games, starting tailback Bell has carried 14, 10, 21, 14 and 12 times.

The Rams have become a different team, and because of age on the line, they don’t hit nearly as much as they used to do in practice. And the key to any good running game, the Rams have long preached, is excessive physical contact. It may be a little soon to bury their line, though.

“After losing three weeks in a row and not being able to score a whole lot of points, you’ve got to come out and do something,” right guard Duval Love said. “But everyone’s good in the league, and you go through those phases when things don’t go right for you. We hope this week things will happen for us.”

And they hope to keep Keith Millard out of it.

Ram Notes

A rib problem, the latest in a series of minor injuries, forced Gaston Green out of Thursday’s practice. His status for Sunday’s game in Minnesota won’t be known until today. . . . Safety James Washington, who was carted off the field with a pulled left quadriceps during Wednesday’s practice, appeared to have improved Thursday and will probably play Sunday, Coach John Robinson said.