ANALYSIS : Four Plays Have the Rams Seeing Things : <i> “We could be 6-10 or 12-4, I really believe that, depending on how well we do and what happens injury-wise. That’s pretty damn exciting, sitting with that kind of swing.”</i> --JOHN ROBINSON, Sept. 6, 1989
Maybe football coaches know something we don’t. After nine games this year, four hair-raising plays have been the difference for the Rams, who could just as easily be 3-6 or 7-2, as 5-4.
Truth is, the Rams were never as good as advertised at 5-0 and aren’t nearly as bad as they look now at 0-4. They are, uncannily so, what their coach had predicted: a young, talent-laden team with too many defensive soft spots to draw serious conclusions, a team that keeps you running for the antacids.
In retrospect, 5-4 through nine games wasn’t so far-fetched, considering the strength of the Rams’ schedule through the middle--Buffalo, New Orleans, Chicago, Minnesota, New York Giants. Yet the Rams, as in past seasons, remain the masters of heartstring plucking, first teasing their fans with a red-hot start, then crushing them coldly with stunning losses against the Bills and Vikings.
They’ve turned reality into a high-wire act, but it’s reality nonetheless.
Still, the Rams are quite capable of winning five of their last seven games, and they get Dallas, the New York Jets and the New England Patriots in December.
“If you just accept for a second that we make those plays in those two games,” Robinson said Thursday, “we’re 7-2, we’re right there, you’re saying this is a Super Bowl team and that the 49ers’ game (Dec. 11) is going to be the one, and all those things. I’m not willing to accept the opposite, that we’ve all of a sudden lost it all.”
It could have been worse, like 3-6.
The four plays?
--Sept. 24, Rams vs. Green Bay Packers at Anaheim Stadium. The Rams led, 38-7, at halftime, but the Packers cut the lead to 38-31 and had a first and goal at the Rams’ one-yard line with 11:23 left when Brent Fullwood fumbled just inches short of the end zone with what should have been the game-tying touchdown. The Rams hung on, 41-38.
--Oct. 1, Rams vs. San Francisco in Candlestick Park. San Francisco fullback Tom Rathman, running out the clock on a presumed 12-10 victory, fumbled at the Rams’ 19-yard line with 2:59 left. The Rams drove 72 yards and won the game on Mike Lansford’s 26-yard field goal with two seconds left. Rathman hadn’t fumbled before that moment this season and hasn’t since.
--Oct. 16, Rams vs. Buffalo in Rich Stadium. Bills quarterback Frank Reich hits Andre Reed on an eight-yard scoring pass with 16 seconds left to give the Bills a 23-20 victory. This, after the Rams seemed to pull the game out on a 78-yard Jim Everett to Flipper Anderson scoring pass with 1:22 left.
--Nov. 5, Rams vs. Minnesota at the Metrodome. With the Rams leading, 21-18, and 28 seconds remaining, Wade Wilson threw 43 yards to Hassan Jones on a desperation pass, setting up the game-tying field goal with 12 seconds remaining. The Vikings won in overtime, 23-21.
It comes down the this: If Rathman and Fullwood don’t fumble, the Rams are probably 3-6 today. Then again, if the Rams make one play on the Bills’ final scoring drive, and somebody knocks down Wilson’s pass, they’re 7-2, and all death-watch warnings are called off.
“But since we didn’t make those two plays, now we’re 5-4,” cornerback LeRoy Irvin said. “I had a chance to make a play, to knock down the Hail Mary, I didn’t knock it down, we played a good game that day, but we have to be able to make the play when we have to make it, that’s the difference of winning and losing.”
So what’s wrong with the Rams? If they make two plays, apparently nothing. But since they didn’t, everything.
ANYONE SEEN A DEFENSE?
The Rams gambled and lost by trying to tip-toe through the season with tissue-thin depth at inside linebacker. Turns out, they couldn’t even make it through training camp. Fred Strickland and Larry Kelm, the projected starters to replace Carl Ekern (retired) and Jim Collins/Mark Jerue (free agent/bad knee), practiced together this week for the first time since August because of injuries. The Rams were left to reconsider some draft decisions, and then were forced to move outside linebackers Mel Owens and Frank Stams inside, which set off a chain-reaction that affected the pass rush and the secondary.
Entering Sunday’s game against the New York Giants, the Ram defense ranks 26th overall and 28th against the pass. The Rams have only 17 sacks through nine games. They had 41 through nine last season. The sack total and pass defense ranking relationship cannot be divorced.
The Rams’ top draft pick, defensive end Bill Hawkins, has not been the answer to Gary Jeter, who had 11 1/2 sacks in 1988.
Hawkins, who was moved from defensive end to tackle, is still looking for his first sack.
The Rams first tried playing their aggressive Eagle defense without Strickland and Kelm, but were burned unmercifully, and have rolled back into a familiar containment zone. Call it the Silver Stretch Defense. The Rams have at least managed to slow the bleeding some.
“We had to be realists, we were 28th against the pass,” Irvin said. “In the Eagle they’d been getting us, and having big plays against us. We’ve got to change up, not because of the young guys, but because of a lot of the older guys, like some of the old guys who have been around the been a couple of times. . . . It’s the old guys like me. And I’ll take the heat.”
JIM EVERETT, YOUR HALO IS SLIPPING
Everett’s quarterback rating has dropped 20 points during the four-game losing streak, from 106.4 to 84.5. Is it all his fault? No. Robinson has drastically restricted the passing scheme in the past month to protect Everett against a succession of all-star pass-rush teams such as Buffalo (Bruce Smith), New Orleans (Pat Swilling), Chicago (Richard Dent), Minnesota (Keith Millard) and this week’s opponent, New York (Lawrence Taylor).
The Rams also have tried to regain a ball-control offense and restore the running game. Still, Everett hasn’t responded well enough to the sack pressure and has allowed his timing to be disrupted. However, when it counted in crunch time, Everett made the big plays to beat Buffalo and Minnesota, and then watched his defense fail him.
As long as Ernie Zampese remains the offensive coordinator and Robinson the coach, there will be conflict between pass vs. run. Robinson said his best teams at USC thrived on the friction between philosophies.
Robinson is so intent on keeping his team from becoming the free-wheeling San Diego Chargers of the early 1980s that he is perhaps forcing the run issue without the kind of weapons he’s used to owning.
Face it, the Rams’ running game has changed forever. Greg Bell is a good tailback, but not in the same league as Eric Dickerson. The Ram offensive line is aging, and can’t hit like it used to during the week. The team practices in full pads only once a week. The running game is determination and will, Robinson says. But it seems will has given way to shorts and helmets four times a week.
The running game can’t be restored on command. It’s becoming clear that Gaston Green is not a Robinson-type runner, and the strategy of using 1988’s first pick on the former UCLA star gets stranger by the minute.
Rookie tailback Cleveland Gary might be the answer as an inside runner, but his late arrival has taken him out of the 1989 picture.
IS THERE TIME TO CATCH THE 49ERS?
Yes, and it’s not a mind-boggling scenario. The Rams, who have already beaten the 49ers once, need to pick up one game on San Francisco in the next four weeks games to pull within two before the Dec. 11 showdown at Anaheim Stadium. Assuming the Rams beat the 49ers again, a must in this formula, it would leave the Rams one game back with two remaining.
San Francisco, a better road team than home team, closes the season with home games against Buffalo and Chicago.
The Rams finish with the Jets and Patriots, relative patsies. The Rams would only need to finish in a tie with the 49ers for the division title, winning on the basis of sweeping the head-to-head series.
Of course, the 49ers might never lose again. And who knows when another desperation pass will sneak through the Rams’ secondary?
The most perplexing Rams’ season in recent memory rages on. And you can’t say the coach didn’t say it was coming.
“When you think of the 49er game, and this one (Minnesota), and the Buffalo game, yeah, those are hair-raisers,” Robinson said.
Ram Notes
Gaston Green’s rib injury has now moved to his stomach, and the Rams still haven’t offered much of a diagnosis. . . . Coach John Robinson said he was impressed with the play of inside linebackers Fred Strickland and Larry Kelm. Both are expected to play Sunday. . . . Corner LeRoy Irvin returned to practice after missing Wednesday with a foot bruise. . . . Safety James Washington’s thigh injury will keep him out of Sunday’s game, but Robinson said the Rams won’t bring in another defensive back this week. Former Ram Johnnie Johnson, released recently by Seattle, is available if needed. . . . The Rams need to make a personnel decision today to get Kelm on the active roster.
