After Another Close Call, It’s Time for the Main Event

LeRoy Irvin, the Ram who promotes boxing matches when he isn’t promoting pain on NFL wide receivers, was having trouble keeping his guises in opposite corners Sunday afternoon.

“It’s going to be humongous ,” Irvin proclaimed from the soap-box berth of his locker stall. “It’s going be the best game of this year. It’ll be like a mini-Super Bowl.”

Irvin was on a Don King kind of roll. Watch out for falling superlatives. As you listened, you kept waiting for his haircut to spin out of control, sprouting straight for the Texas Stadium rafters.

“On Monday night!” Irvin continued. “You couldn’t ask for a better audience. And you couldn’t ask for more to be on the line. Everybody’s going to be watching.

“I’m just glad I’m going to be a part of it.”

That much, we can believe. The object of Irvin’s hype--the Rams and 49ers, big stakes at the Big A, beee there --remains a main event, much to the Rams’ relief and the Dallas Cowboys’ disbelief.

With less than five minutes left in Sunday’s prelim, it looked as if the Rams wouldn’t survive the undercard.

There was the Rams’ world, ready to crash through the hole in the Texas Stadium roof with 4:20 left to play. The gimme had become a giveaway, the underdogs had gone over the top and the 1-11 Cowboys were 10 points ahead of the 8-4 Rams.

Hadn’t Roger Staubach already retired?

With no Herschel Walker, no Michael Irvin, no depth, no experience and no chance, the Cowboys were back where they always seem to be against the Rams--with a 31-21 lead and the ball, late in the fourth quarter.

“It was scary,” said Ron Brown, whose fourth-quarter fumble of a Dallas kickoff had helped place the Rams in such a predicament.

And as for the NFC West race, it was all but over. First-place San Francisco had already won, improving its record to 11-2. A Cowboy victory would leave the Rams 8-5, rendering the 49er rematch at Anaheim Stadium a very moot Monday.

And then, in the drop of a football, America’s Scream came thundering back.

Dallas rookie Daryl Johnston fumbled and Ram Larry Kelm recovered.

Jim Everett passed 39 yards to Brown for a Ram touchdown.

Dallas rookie Troy Aikman threw two incomplete passes and the Cowboys punted.

Everett passed 23 yards to Aaron Cox for a Ram touchdown and the game’s decisive points.

You have to hand it to the Rams. If you don’t, you’ll be out of step with the Cowboys and the Saints.

And if NFL games were 55 minutes long, the Rams today would own losses of 17-3 to New Orleans and 31-21 to Dallas. In the past two weeks combined, the Rams put together maybe a decent half-hour of football--and emerged 2-0 because of it.

“We screw up for 57 minutes,” Ram Coach John Robinson said, “and then something comes up and we do something great to pull it out.

“It can’t go on.”

Not with San Francisco on deck. The 49ers have won more Super Bowls this decade than the Cowboys have won games during the past 14 months. After Sunday, Dallas is 2-23 in its past 25 starts.

Were the Rams taking the Cowboys lightly?

Does Jimmy Johnson need new hair?

“I think a lot of people were thinking ahead to our game next week,” Everett said. “Because, it is a huge game.”

But the little ones count just as much in the standings. Huge means nothing if you’re plucking Dallas spurs out of your hide.

The Rams had no business trailing the Cowboys, by any margin, at any time Sunday. They led, 14-0, after their first two possessions. The Dallas defense was in shreds. The Dallas offense was quiet.

Too quiet, as they say in the Westerns.

“It was just too easy,” Robinson said. “It was a classic setup for the kinds of things that can happen to a team.”

So the Rams let up just enough to let Aikman, the UCLA rookie, gain his footing. Some footing, too. Aikman wears No. 8, but many Rams swore it had to be No. 12, judging from the familiar skid marks across their secondary.

If that wasn’t Roger the Dodger, Aikman provided the Rams with an incredible simulation.

“An outstanding runner,” Robinson said, a Trojan praising a Bruin. “I’m really impressed with the guy. He’s a great (draft) pick.”

Besides rushing for 57 yards in four mad scrambles, Aikman passed for 179 yards and four touchdowns. This is notable in that, before Sunday, Aikman had thrown for four touchdowns all season.

The Rams aren’t 24th in the NFL against the pass for nothing.

And Aikman was still firing away, driving the Cowboys to the Ram 11 before time expired and the Rams could exhale.

“We’ve been in five, six games like this now, so I guess we’ve got it down,” Irvin said. “But I’m 32. This is going to give me a heart attack.”

Yet, in Anaheim, the EKG still blips. Clawing and clutching, the Rams made it to the 49ers with their NFC West title aspirations pulsing. Two games down with three to go. The San Francisco game still matters.

It will be big. It will be huge.

Humongous, even.