PRO FOOTBALL : Rams’ Passing Game Wore Down Giants

On game days throughout the John Robinson era, the Rams have usually been hard to handle in the final minutes.

“If we’re even in the fourth quarter, we’ll beat you,” Robinson has said many times during his seven years as the organization’s 17th head coach.

His team has often been as good as his word, but there was a change this time in how it was done:

--Earlier in Robinson’s career, the Rams wore down opponents with running plays.

--In New Jersey Sunday, they wore down the New York Giants with passes.

Thus, in quarterback Jim Everett’s fourth season, the Rams finally have an identity: This has become a hard-nosed passing team.

That was decisively evident in the last few minutes at Giants Stadium, where, once more, they completed a successful comeback.

Lawrence Taylor, the all-pro New York linebacker who sacked Everett twice in the first quarter, ran out of gas in the fourth. And in overtime, he was nowhere to be found on the plays that won another playoff game for the Rams, 19-13.

Although a tight end, Damone Johnson, was prudently placed at fullback to help protect Everett, Taylor wasn’t going to get in anyway.

He was a victim of what might be called Robinson’s Law: Defensive players tire themselves out faster than offensive players.

It doesn’t exhaust the passer or his blockers when a team throws one pass after another. But it does wear down the pass rushers.

That is what put Taylor out of the playoffs.

New York fans are probably saying today that their team just wasn’t meant to win.

It lost mainly because of these reasons:

First, at the end of the half, the Giants let the Rams in the door when Giant Coach Bill Parcells strangely stepped out of character as one of the NFL’s most conservative coaches and tried to play Ram football. Passing from their 20-yard line, the Giants threw the interception that led to a Ram touchdown and halftime lead, 7-6.

Second, in the overtime, the Giants got the worst of a decidedly marginal pass interference penalty that kept the Rams alive.

Third, and possibly most damaging of all, after completing a key square-out pass in the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, the Giants, with score 13-13, made no effort to hustle down the field.

When a 15-yard pass could have set up the winning field goal, they dawdled.

It wasn’t Parcells’ finest hour.

Jerry Glanville, the Houston coach who separated from his job Saturday because his team couldn’t beat the Pittsburgh Steelers last week, looks a little better today.

In Denver Sunday, the Steelers demonstrated that with Tim Worley and Merril Hoge, they have the best backfield in the league, arguably--along with a comer at quarterback, Bubby Brister.

The Broncos won, 24-23, by combining their early-1980s and 1989 offenses.

This has been a season when, after living through the early ‘80s with a big passer, John Elway, the Broncos won with a new running game and a new defense.

Meanwhile, their pass offense slipped. Formerly, Elway had never played on a running team, and his critics have been saying that he couldn’t handle a new kind of offense and still concentrate on his passes.

But with the Broncos trailing Pittsburgh in the fourth quarter, 23-17, Elway revived. On Denver’s last reasonably good chance to win, with seven minutes left, he began, on first and 20, with a clutch pass to wide receiver Mark Jackson for 19 yards--just the way he used to do it.

Then he threw a good a flea-flicker pass to Vance Johnson at the Pittsburgh 27--just the way he used to do it.

And from there, the Broncos, remembering that they’re also a running team now, ran the ball in.

The Cleveland Browns, who held off the Buffalo Bills Saturday, 34-30, have what it takes to win the AFC title in Denver--starting with a slashing runner, Kevin Mack, and a sure receiver, Webster Slaughter, plus the NFL’s best reading quarterback, Bernie Kosar.

In the Denver noise, the home team figures to win, but not by much.

The Browns, however, shouldn’t even be on their way to Mile High Stadium since, in the final minutes of the Cleveland game, a Buffalo running back, Ronnie Harmon, dropped the touchdown pass that should have advanced the bickering Bills.

Harmon, who has had trouble holding the ball before, couldn’t make the easiest catch in football. The ball was gently settling into his hands as he looked directly at it.

Dropped passes are part of football. But this one shouldn’t have been part of that game.