Rams Won’t Say It, but They’ll Cut Down Giants

The idea is to bury the Giants, not praise them, but the Rams are convinced one can’t be done without the other. Spending a week on the wrong end of the bulletin board, as the Rams did against Philadelphia, can do that to a team.

“We just witnessed stupidity,” Ram Coach John Robinson says, “and we’re not going to copy it.”

To the Rams, freedom of speech in Philadelphia translated into Rams 21, Eagles 7, and freedom from Buddy Ryan until next fall. While that might qualify Robinson as the early favorite for 1990 Man of the Year, it also made proceedings blander than usual this week in Anaheim as Ramspeak took over the airwaves.

The Giants have dignity.

Phil Simms is a gamer.

Y. A. Tittle was great.

New Jersey has some very nice landfills.

The Rams think Ramspeak is smart. We think Ramspeak is boring. You know what the Rams are thinking, I know what the Rams are thinking, but if the Rams can’t bring themselves to say it, we’ll have to do it for them.

The Rams are going to San Francisco.

More than that, we’re ready to offer a dozen reasons why.

1. Rams 31, Giants 10. The score of this season’s meeting at Anaheim Stadium.

2. Rams 45, Giants 31. The score of last season’s meeting at the Meadowlands.

3. Jim Everett. In the 1988 game against the Giants, he threw five touchdown passes. In the 1989 game, he completed 18 consecutive passes, a Ram record. Everett’s two-game totals: 37 of 57 (64.9%), 531 yards, seven touchdowns.

4. Two ankles. They belong to Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor, the two most valuable Giants, and neither is completely sound.

At a wobbly 33, Simms is the least mobile quarterback left in the playoffs, but at 23, he was never Randall Cunningham. When Simms drops back into the pocket, he lays down roots--the type of quarterback the Rams defense best.

Taylor, though still the heart of a New York defensive unit that placed fifth in the league this season, can be blocked. The Rams proved this on Nov. 12, when they limited Taylor, good pins and all, to a pair of nondescript, unobtrusive tackles.

5. Ottis Anderson. The new key to the Giant offense is 32 years old, a plodder left unprotected in last year’s Plan B free-agent scheme and a man who sat on the bench from 1986 until Joe Morris broke a foot in training camp. Much has been made of Anderson’s revival in his 11th NFL season, but his 1,023 yards came in 323 carries. That’s an average of 3.1 yards an attempt, journeyman numbers through and through, and a lot of wear and tear on a battered old body.

6. Game plans. In what may be a first, New York plays it more conservatively than Orange County. The Giants run to run some more--and the run is the one thing the Rams know how to stop. The Rams have held their past eight opponents to an average of 85.1 rushing yards a game, including New York’s net total of six yards in the November encounter. In their past half-dozen meetings with the Rams, the Giants have averaged just 60.7 yards on the ground.

7. The Rams against the East. This season, the Rams have owned the NFC East, a division in a down year, with a 3-0 record against New York, Dallas and Philadelphia.

8. The Giants against the field. New York is 1-4 against NFC playoff competition--losing twice to Philadelphia, once to San Francisco and once to the Rams. The Giants did beat Minnesota, 24-14, but that matchup was rendered moot Saturday in Candlestick.

9. Current events. The Rams, who do nothing in moderation, are streaking upward again, having won seven of their past eight games after losing four straight after winning five in a row. And while the Rams were regaining their playoff bearings last Sunday, the Giants have been waiting two weeks to play their first postseason game since their Super Bowl appearance in January 1987. For the majority of the 1989 Giants, this game marks a venture into uncharted territory.

10. Ram weather. Twenty-below with the wind-chill in New England? Frozen rain in Philadelphia? What’s one more afternoon on the NFL’s polar cap for the all-weather, all-purpose Rams, the new Nanooks of the West?

11. Dwayne Crutchfield is gone. The last time the Rams played the Giants in the playoffs, in the wild-card round of 1984, the Rams lost, 16-13, because Robinson thought it was a good idea to use Eric Dickerson as a decoy near the goal line and hand the ball instead to Dwayne Crutchfield. Crutchfield was stopped helplessly short of the end zone while the NFL’s first 2,100-yard man stood by idly and the Rams went down in an upset.

Five years later, Crutchfield and Dickerson are former Rams and Robinson, by now, probably has learned to deal with the temptation.

12. It’s about time. Ten years have passed since the Rams turned a tipped Vince Ferragamo pass against Dallas and three field goals against Tampa Bay into their first Super Bowl berth. Weird things are happening again to the Rams, weird things that win games, and it’s getting harder to shake the feeling that ’89 is going to be ’79 all over.

That said, we will now shut up and watch and listen. The Rams have the floor today, the Giants have their attention and Ramspeak is the dialogue of the hour.

Love that Dave Meggett.