COMMENTARY : And They Haven’t Even Seen Montana Yet

Anthony Dilweg, the fluke from Duke, passes for three touchdowns on opening day, turning the Rams green by the bay, and it can get no worse, right?

Boomer Esiason goes deep, short, right, left, up the middle and over the top for 471 yards, the most by a Ram opponent, and it can get no worse, right?

Jim Harbaugh, Bear quarterback by default, bare cupboard in the Chicago offensive backfield, completes 18 of 25 passes for a career-high 248 yards, throwing the Rams for a 38-9 loss, and it can get no worse, right?

Doug Reed, defensive tackle for a defensive unit that only tackles on occasion, pondered these questions for a long time in front of his locker Sunday night.

“I think we’ve hit rock bottom,” Reed said. “I don’t think we can do any worse . . . unless there’s some way we can give up 50 points in the first half.”

Just give the Rams time.

Right now, the Rams have a defense so frightfully bad, so unilaterally disarmed, that its potential for disaster elicits an almost perverse fascination.

What will Joe Montana do once he gets a hold of it? Five hundred yards? Six hundred? Do I hear seven hundred?

Will Warren Moon throw for eight touchdowns?

Right now, the Rams have a defense that can’t get a sack, can’t cover a receiver, can’t intercept a pass, can’t do anything except chase opposing pass catchers into the end zone. It is sustenance for the starving quarterbacks of the world. Harbaugh entered Sunday’s game with cracked ribs, a reputation in worse shape and a coach who takes care not to let Harbaugh “do anything he can’t do.”

Like throwing overhand.

But against the Rams, Mike Ditka cut the leash and turned Harbaugh loose. After eight Chicago plays from scrimmage, Harbaugh had passed five times. He passed for 177 yards in the first half. He completed nine consecutive passes in one stretch and converted on each of the Bears’ first eight third-down attempts.

Slingin’ Jimmy Harbaugh.

Deep down, Ram Coach John Robinson could hardly blame Ditka.

“I’m sure they’ve read about us,” Robinson said. “They know we have not been playing pass defense very well. Their strength is running the football, but I’m sure they saw this as a chance to balance out their offense.”

Nice balance, too. After four possessions, Chicago led, 28-0. Two touchdowns came on passes by Harbaugh, two others came on runs by Harbaugh and Brad Muster, the Bear fullback.

A week ago, Cincinnati rolled through the Rams just as relentlessly. Three possessions, three touchdowns, 21-0 Ram deficit.

“You look up at the scoreboard,” Reed says, “and you tell yourself, ‘This is not happening.’ ”

But it is.

It happens because the Rams, nouveau vegetarians, refused to take a bite out of Harbaugh’s ribs. On his first touchdown pass, six minutes into the game, Harbaugh dropped back in the pocket and was given enough time to:

a) Remodel Soldier Field.

b) Go back to Michigan and get his masters.

c) Scan the stadium and find tailback Neal Anderson, loafing around the back of the end zone, with nothing else to do but hem and haw and wait for Harbaugh’s 12-yard pass to finally reach him.

Robinson aged five years while the ball was in the air.

The Rams took the NFL’s 28th--and last-place--defense into Sunday’s game. They left with something conceivably worse. Fred Strickland, the oft-injured young inside linebacker, was stricken again, breaking his left leg early in the second quarter. He is out for the season after missing four games in 1989 because of torn knee cartilage.

One month after taking a projected Super Bowl contender into a bright new season--Sports Illustrated, jinx as healthy as ever, picked the Rams to go all the way--Robinson now talks of the need to “rebuild.”

“We have to go home and start to rebuild ourselves, bit by bit, piece by piece,” Robinson said. Playoffs are no longer on his mind. “You have to keep the ship from sinking before you can thinking about moving it.”

Defensive help is on its way, however. The way the Rams are playing, they could have their pick of the crop. Teams with the top choice in the draft usually do.