ANALYSIS : How Close Are Rams to Good? : Pro Football: They were never as strong as the 5-0 record of the early season. But they are not as weak as the 0-4 team since. There is still time to catch the 49ers and win the NFC West championship.
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. --John Robinson, Sept. 6, 1989.
After nine games, 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 for their last four weeks. They are what their coach had predicted: A young, inconsistent, talented team with too many defensive soft spots to draw serious conclusions--a team that keeps you running for the antacids.
In retrospect, 5-4 wasn’t so far-fetched, considering the Ram schedule through the middle--Buffalo, New Orleans, Chicago, Minnesota. 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 with stunning losses to the Bills and the Vikings.
They’ve turned reality into a high-wire act.
Still, five of the Rams’ final seven games are quite winnable, and they get the Dallas Cowboys, 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 Ram one with 11:23 left when Brent Fullwood fumbled inches short of the end zone with what should have been the tying touchdown. The Rams hung on, 41-38.
--Oct. 1, Rams vs. San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park. Fullback Tom Rathman of the 49ers, running out the clock on a presumed 12-10 win, fumbled at the Ram 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. Until then, Rathman hadn’t fumbled this season and hasn’t since.
--Oct. 16, Rams vs. Buffalo Bills at Rich Stadium. 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 came after the Rams had seemed to pull the game out on a 78-yard Jim Everett-to-Flipper Anderson touchdown pass with 1:22 left.
--Nov. 5, Rams vs. Minnesota Vikings at the Metrodome. With the Rams leading, 21-18, and 28 seconds remaining, Wade Wilson threw a Hail Mary pass of 43 yards to Hassan Jones, setting up the game-tying field goal with 12 seconds remaining. The Vikings won in overtime, 23-21.
It comes down to this: If Rathman and Fullwood don’t fumble, the Rams are 3-6 today. Then again, if the Rams make one play on the Bills’ final scoring drive, and somebody knocks down Wilson’s desperation pass, they’re 7-2, and all death-watch warnings are called off.
“But since we didn’t make those two plays, 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 tiptoe through the season with tissue-thin depth at inside linebacker. They couldn’t even get through training camp. Because of injuries, 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. The Rams were left to reconsider draft decisions, 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 Giants in Anaheim, the Ram defense ranks 26th overall and 28th against the pass. The Rams have only 17 sacks. They had 41 through nine games last season. The sack total and pass defense ranking relationship cannot be divorced.
The Rams’ top draft choice, defensive end Bill Hawkins, has not been the answer to the loss of Gary Jeter, who had 11 1/2 sacks in 1988 before becoming a free agent.
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 they have pulled up stakes and rolled back into a familiar containment zone. Call it the Silver Stretch Defense. The Rams have at least managed to slow the bleeding.
“We had to be realists--we were 28th against the pass,” Irvin said of the recent adjustments. “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’ve been around 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 more than 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 the Bills (Bruce Smith), the Saints (Pat Swilling), the Bears (Richard Dent), the Vikings (Keith Millard) and, this week, the Giants (Lawrence Taylor).
The Rams have also tried to regain a ball-control offense. 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, 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 and 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 may be forcing the run issue without the kind of weapons he is used to owning.
Let’s 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 hit 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 draft 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 to pull within two before their Dec. 11 showdown in Anaheim. Assuming that 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 the Bills and the Bears.
The Rams close out with the Jets and the 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 (if they win Dec. 11).
Of course, the 49ers may never lose again, the way they’re going. And who knows when another Hail Mary pass will sneak through the Ram secondary?
The most perplexing Ram 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.
