Rams Fumble Away Chances, Fail to Recover From Adversity : Football: Robinson says team didn't have 'extra something' needed to overcome injuries, inactivity and Packers.

By TIM KAWAKAMI

Sept. 11, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

ANAHEIM —

Everybody--yes, even the Dallas Cowboys--can win when the sun is shining, the breaks are rolling true and all is right with your football world.

The Packers did, and the happy city of Green Bay is probably still sleeping off the aftereffects.

The trick, Ram Coach John Robinson explained Monday, is to win when the sky darkens, the ball starts jumping loose from normally able hands and a second-string quarterback cuts up your defense as if he were Bart Starr.

To be a Super team, a 49ers’ kind of team, you must win on days when the football gods say thou shalt not.

That is what the Rams did not do in their 36-24 misfire Sunday against Green Bay, and that is why they are 0-1 and left to wonder why.

“I think this football team has to make sure it understands it has to find a way to win when things aren’t going well,” Robinson said Monday.

“That’s the disappointing factor of this game to me. Everything wasn’t right for us, but we didn’t find the extra something that overcomes those kinds of problems.

“Maybe we didn’t quite understand where we were. I think it’s pretty clear to everybody right now that we are a club that has to fight now. We’ve got our backs against the wall and have to fight.”

Easy to explain, but a bit harder to pull off when the Rams were without their top two cornerbacks due to injuries, and with a host of frontline players severely rusty after missing most of the exhibition season due to holding out or health problems.

Wide receiver Henry Ellard has hardly practiced at all, and he fumbled three consecutive times--losing two--in the second half Sunday.

Meanwhile, in his first pro start, Packer quarterback Anthony Dilweg threw for 248 yards and three touchdowns against a patched-up Ram defense.

So what did Robinson want--and Sunday against Tampa Bay, expect --to see in that woeful Ram third quarter?

“Just a kind of intensity or a wildness,” Robinson said. “We played hard and they played hard, but I don’t think there was ever anything that had you saying, ‘Wow, the Rams are really making up for their lack of (exhibition work); they’re really doing it.’

“Maybe I did a bad job of making us realize that we had our backs against the wall. I think maybe there was some belief that, hey, everything will be good and we’ll win this game.

“There wasn’t a little extra. . . . The thing that sticks in my mind (as the reason) that I think we failed, me and the team, was that we didn’t exert some special energy to get us over the hump.”

And here we all thought the Rams just needed to heal up, hunker down and play football to get over their injuries. Clearly, they are not totally healed yet and won’t be for a few weeks. But Robinson says it’s more than just getting healthy.

“Maybe we got so obsessed with trying to make sure we had healthy people on the practice field last week,” Robinson said. “Everything was geared to making sure people stayed healthy and were healthy--(maybe) that took away some of the focus I thought we had to have on the will(power) part of the game. It wasn’t there.”

As the Rams head into Sunday’s date with the 1-0 Buccaneers in sure-to-be-sweltering Tampa, Fla., they must do some serious fine-tuning over the next few days. The Bucs defeated Detroit, 38-21 in their opener.

Otherwise, this season that began with promise and pride could go quickly south before the Rams play a single home game.

“I wish we were practicing today and tomorrow,” Robinson said, referring to the fact that the Rams had classroom work Monday and are taking today off. “Not as punishment or anything, just say, ‘Hey, we need to get out there and go.’ I just don’t think we can because of some of the circumstances we have, (but) I think we will come back quickly and reshape our groove.”

Robinson, who said he was fairly satisfied with the Rams’ defense, given all the turnovers to the Packers, said he was most unhappy with the rhythm of the passing game.

Quarterback Jim Everett was 24 of 40 for 340 yards with two interceptions, and never seemed comfortable. Almost certainly, the timing was off because none of the top three receivers--Ellard, Flipper Anderson and Aaron Cox--saw anything but limited practice time heading into Sunday.

“I thought Jim was uncertain about receivers, uncertain about timing at times,” Robinson said. “And of course the receivers . . . it was great to see them. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen any of them. I’m glad they got through the game, and hopefully we can move onward from here. But obviously, we’ve got some work to do there.

“Of 40 passes that we threw, which is too many to throw in a game, we must have had a miscue or a mistime or a mis-something on about half of the plays.”

Ram Notes

Was Coach John Robinson frustrated with the field position Green Bay had after all those Ram turnovers in the third quarter? “The third quarter was a joke,” he said. “They could have put a used-car lot on their side of the 50--the game wasn’t played down there at all.” . . . Robinson said that just because he played Curt Warner a lot more than Gaston Green Sunday, it is no indication of how much time either will see in the upcoming weeks. Warner carried the ball 13 times for 47 yards and a touchdown; Green had five carries for 12 yards. “I think Curt’s a better pass blocker than Gaston, and there were some inside blitzes where the back had to pick things up,” Robinson said. “I got him in the game a little more while we were still adjusting to that, and he was doing good, so I kept him in the game. But don’t anybody start thinking that (it means something). I will play those two pretty much even in Sunday’s game.”

That 47-yard, first-half touchdown from Packer quarterback Anthony Dilweg to receiver Mike Query was against man-to-man coverage. Robinson said he couldn’t fault cornerback Bobby Humphery too much, saying he thought it was just a case of a misthrown pass and Query making a major adjustment to get to it.

The Rams expect starting right tackle Jackie Slater, who missed Sunday’s game due to a dislocated toe, to play against Tampa Bay. They also expect backup lineman Joe Milinchik, who missed the Packer game because of a broken thumb, to be ready for the Buccaneers. Milinchik could be in the starting lineup if starting right guard Duval Love is still hampered by the right ankle and knee he sprained Sunday. The Rams are not sure about linebacker Mike Wilcher, who sprained his knee Sunday, returned to the game, but experienced soreness afterward. After an examination Monday, he was listed as day-to-day.

RAMS NUMBERS

HIGHLIGHT: FLIPPER ANDERSON

On a day in which his fellow receivers had trouble holding on to the ball, Flipper Anderson picked up right where he left off last season. He caught five of Jim Everett’s passes for 128 yards, including one of 40 yards for a second-quarter touchdown in his team’s disappointing 36-24 loss to Green Bay.

SEASON TO DATE

One-game totals

FIRST DOWNS

RAMS: 18 OPP: 18

RUSHING YARDS

RAMS: 87 OPP: 95

PASSING YARDS

RAMS: 340 OPP: 248

PUNTS / AVERAGE

RAMS: 5/48 OPP: 3/25

RUSHING

ATT AVG TDs RAMS 24 3.6 1 OPP 29 3.3 1