On Film, It Was a Different Team : Eagles: Life doesn’t imitate art as Rams go against their defensive tendencies and take away Cunningham’s top target.

What the Eagles saw wasn’t what they got.

In preparing for Sunday’s NFC wild-card playoff game against the Rams, the Eagles thought they had viewed enough tapes to deal with any contingency. The reel life Rams may have appeared beatable, but the real life Rams weren’t.

“They play a lot different than you see on film,” Philadelphia quarterback Randall Cunningham said. “The way they were playing their zones, you could see that they knew what we did.”

Bolstered by a superb effort from their defensive unit, the Rams transformed rain-soaked Veterans Stadium into the set of a horror film in which the Eagles were the unwitting and helpless victims. The Rams’ 21-7 victory doused the Eagles’ New Year’s and Super Bowl plans and left Cunningham wondering what--and who--had hit him.

“Normally, they play a lot of man-to-man and I had plays in my mind for a three-six defense,” Cunningham said. “When you see them one week and see them the other week, you think they’re not as good as they are. What they did early was take Keith Jackson away. They took our wideouts away, which we like to use, and the short passing game going to the fullback or tight end . . .

“A couple of times I’d roll out or step out of the pocket but there were so many defenders there, I didn’t want to force an interception because Jim Everett can put points on the board. They played more zone than any team we’ve seen all year long and they played it better than any team.”

They played it well enough to hold the Eagles scoreless until the fourth quarter and repeatedly frustrate Cunningham and the Eagles’ offense.

“You have to give them the game ball,” Eagle Coach Buddy Ryan said of the Rams’ defense. “We couldn’t catch the ball and we couldn’t run the ball. It wasn’t anything fancy. When you make three first downs in the first half, you won’t do anything doing that.”

The Eagles claimed that they would have been able to do more offensive damage if they hadn’t faced a 14-0 deficit before the game was 7 1/2 minutes old.

“They played a zone all game long, which they’re comfortable with,” said Jackson, an All-Pro at tight end. “The only way you can force them to play man-to-man is if you get ahead. It never clicked. It was hit and miss the whole game.

“Fourteen points is not hard to come back. I don’t think the Rams are as good as the Redskins and we came back after we were down 14 against them (for a 42-37 victory Sept. 17). The Rams wanted to take me out and they doubled up on me a lot and bracketed me a lot. It’s frustrating as an athlete when you want to get going and you can’t. It would have been a whole different show if we’d gotten ahead early because they would have had to play man-to-man.”

The man they were most concerned with was Cunningham.

“Their game plan was to stop him and he had a little trouble, like anyone would,” Jackson said. “They used drop-back zones, disguised zones, everything. It was hard for him to find an open man.”

It was especially hard in the first half, when Cunningham was eight for 17 for 78 yards.

“Defensively, they dropped everyone,” wide receiver Greg Garrity said. “Randall had to make a perfect pass to get it in. We were expecting a little more man-to-man.”

To a man, the Rams knew that if they covered Cunningham’s primary target, they could force him to scrap his planned pass and go to a ground game. Their chances of stopping a rush was better than preventing the pass: although their pass defense ranked 28th in the NFL, their rushing defense ranked fifth. Overall, the defense ranked 21st.

“In the films a lot, he’s a one-looker. If he doesn’t like it, he’s gone,” Ram inside linebacker Mel Owens said of Cunningham’s tendency to carry the ball himself if he can’t find a receiver at first glance. By playing a zone, Owens said, “He has to sit in there, read the coverage and find someone.”

Cunningham, who scrambled his way out of many jams during the regular season, finished 24 for 40 for 238 yards passing, but many of those yards were meaningless gains late in the fourth quarter.

The Eagles’ last real shot came on a drive that began with 6:34 to go and the Rams clinging to a 14-7 lead. Cunningham missed one connection with Garrity on second down and on third and six at the 44, he launched a bomb downfield to Jackson, who was near the 18-yard line. The Rams’ defense saved the day, as Alfred Jackson stepped in and tipped the pass away.

“It might have been the play of the day,” Keith Jackson said. “We had momentum and I was a yard away from breaking the game open. The defensive back made a super play. Randall was running out of the pocket, and if he had more time it might have turned out different, but the guy just made a great play.”

It was a play that surprised Cunningham. “Normally when we run that play the cornerback comes up,” he said. “They shot the linebacker up and left the cornerback deep. I tried to put it out there but the guy knocked it down.”

And so they knocked the Eagles out of the playoffs.

“The plays we normally run, they took my timing off because of the zone,” Cunningham said. “They dink and dunk but those aren’t going to get you downfield. We needed a big play and they didn’t let us get it.

“They came out to play and did what they had to do to stop us. They’re a good football team. I hope they go on and win the Super Bowl. To see this come down to losing a playoff game at home is very tough. They did a better job than we did. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board and give them credit today.”

The disappointment of the Eagles’ loss might outlast even the worst New Year’s hangover.

“We just ran out of time,” tackle Mike Golic contended. “We felt last year when we got in the playoffs that we were lucky. This year we wanted nothing short of the Super Bowl. A lot of people are going to be seriously bummed out for a long time to lose this wild-card game. A lot of people might say ‘Well, you can build on this,’ but I’m too disgusted to even think about that.”

All-Pro end Reggie White also wasn’t in the best of moods.

“We didn’t do the job. That’s it,” he said. “Right now I’m too upset to talk.”

Ryan said he was pleased with his team’s defensive work but less than thrilled with its offensive showing.

“I can’t be mad at the defense. They did a hell of a job (although) we didn’t get that many turnovers,” he said.

Asked if he was mad at the offense, he nodded affirmatively. “I’m concerned about everything,” he said. “It was a combination of a lot of things. But hell, I never have cried about things and I’m not going to cry now.”

He said Cunningham “did a pretty good job. Nobody did a real great job. You could go through that locker room and I don’t think you’d find anybody who did a great job.”