The Defense Can Get Back to Earth : Rams: After being riddled by passing attacks, L.A. can play to its strong suit against the run-oriented Bears.

The Rams aren’t particularly worried that the Chicago Bears are 4-1 and looking devastatingly effective or that they themselves are 1-3 and looking devastated.

All the Rams know is that Boomer Esiason and Randall Cunningham and the other elite quarterbacks who have frazzled the Rams’ defense, or are looking forward to doing so soon, are otherwise occupied today, and that is enough to give the team with the worst defense in the league a cheery outlook on tonight’s matchup.

“I think they’re happy not to see Boomer Esiason this week,” said Coach John Robinson, who saw Esiason’s Bengals amass 563 total yards of offense against his Rams.

Tonight, the Rams will a somewhat more pleasant contrast in the solid but rarely flamboyant Bears, who play sound defense and run an offense designed to avoid mistakes. Their quarterback, assuming he can play despite broken ribs, is Jim Harbaugh, who will throw 40 passes only over Coach Mike Ditka’s dead body.

“We don’t ask him to do any more or any less than we feel we have to do to win a football game,” Ditka said of Harbaugh. “He understands that role. He knows that we don’t throw the ball around 60 times a game here.”

The Bears don’t throw the ball around 60 times every three games. Harbaugh has thrown 85 passes this season, 61 fewer than the Rams’ Jim Everett, who has played one fewer game.

The Bears’ game plan is always to give the ball to running back Neal Anderson, then try it again about 25 more times. Keep the score low, have the defense dominate the other team, and plow out victory on the ground with the most productive running attack in the league.

“Same way we ran the ball when we were just running the ball,” Robinson said. “You just keep doing it. And if your defense gets the ball back for you, there’s not a sense of urgency.”

Because a poor pass rush rarely hinders running backs, the Rams naturally prefer defending against the run.

The Rams have fallen behind quickly in all three of their defeats this season, because they have been picked apart through the air. And that has been a result of their poor pass rush, which has not been able to harry quarterbacks.

Against the run, however, the Rams are No. 15 in the NFL. Nothing they have done so far proves that they can handle the brute force of the Bears, but they have experienced enough futility against passing teams to think that they will probably do better against a running team.

“I think the Bears are playing into the strong point of our defense,” said defensive lineman Bill Hawkins, which, of course, is another way of saying that they are not playing into the Rams’ weakness.

“God, I hope that’s right,” Robinson said. “You know, right now we’re not stopping anything well.”

The Rams understand that if they can stop Anderson early, if they can hold the fort defensively for a half or so and let Everett and the Rams’ No. 1-rated offense go to work without the burden of playing catchup, the Bears could be forced to ask their quarterback to do things they don’t like him to do. Such as pass.

And when you force the Bears to pass, you already have beaten them.

“When a club like that has a problem is when they play somebody who can put points on the board and they begin to fall behind,” Robinson said. “That’s where the frustration begins with them.”

So that becomes the Rams’ mission in this game: Score early, force Harbaugh to have to throw to beat them, trick him with some fancy coverages, travel home happily with a 2-3 record and the hopes of this season still flickering.

Which assumes, of course, that the Ram offense can penetrate a Bear defense that held the Rams to 10 points in their game last season. Easier said than won.

The Bears are giving up only 250 yards a game, and are pressuring offenses aggressively enough to have forced a conference-leading 15 turnovers.

“You think about trying to force them into a different game plan,” Everett said. “But their defense has always been very stingy as far as that goes.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us, to be able to put the points on the board, but I definitely think we would force them out of their game plan if we scored early.”

But Everett seems to welcome that challenge, as opposed to having to rally his offense up off the bench after yet another opposition touchdown drive, playing more out of panic than panache.

If the Rams are going to salvage this season, if they are going to tread among the leaders of the league and not dive deep with the NFL underclass of 1990, Everett believes that they have to beat the Bears.

And that there are no more excuses.

“We can’t afford to lose any more,” Everett said. “We’re trying to come in there with the best attitude we can, knowing that there’s a lot of pressure on the Los Angeles Rams to get a victory.

“If we want to live up to what our expectations were before the season, it means we have to win.”

Ram Notes

Bear Coach Mike Ditka says he is surprised by the Rams’ 1-3 record. “They’re the best football team we’ve seen on film, offensively, without a question,” Ditka said. “Defensively, I don’t see all the bad things they’re doing, except it seems like every time they do make a mistake or have a problem, it ends up being seven points or a big play, at least.”