Top Brass Star in Rams’ Nightmare

I had a dream, or so I thought.

There was this dwarf, a dancing dwarf, speaking in a strange tongue, offering strange clues into the mysterious and unsolved murder of the Los Angeles Rams.

“I knew the Rams weren’t going to be a Super Bowl team,” the dwarf said, “because at some point, the upstairs was going to kill the downstairs. If you put too much weight on the floor, the bottom’s going to drop out.”

The dwarf also said: “It ain’t the players or the coaching staff as to why the Rams are 2-5 now. It’s the general manager. Point blank.”

And: “You can blame Fritz (Shurmur), but I always blame the people who can make a change. John Robinson, they don’t give him the power to make changes. No one makes changes but John Shaw.”

I quickly reached for my tape recorder, hoping to dictate everything I could remember, and then it hit me.

This was no dream.

There was no dwarf.

It was only Greg Bell, speaking his mind in the newspapers from the soapbox of 6-1 Raiderland, where the sun always shines, and the birds always sing a pretty song.

Who killed the L.A. Rams?

Bell, as one who served and got out alive, might have an ax to grind, but his words still cut deep and true. The problem isn’t Robinson, who last season took half a team--good hit, no field--and got to the front porch of the Super Bowl. Nor is it Shurmur, whose wily 0-5-6 defensive scheme threw the Philadelphia Eagles out of the 1989 playoffs and had the rest of the football world lining up to touch the hem of his garments.

Nobody goes from sage to senile in nine months.

No, the Rams are paying now for the mistakes of the past, for the mistakes of their owner and her general manager and a front-office philosophy that has swindled its coaching staff and its fans by constantly cutting corners and taking the cheapest way out.

If a fan is to expect an honest deal when he or she buys a ticket--and that’s the least they should expect--Ram fans have been defrauded by Georgia Frontiere and John Shaw. The entire Frontiere/Shaw strategy has been brazenly cynical: Assemble a decent, not great, product; assemble it at a plain-wrapper cost; hire a silver-tongued salesman to pass it off as top-shelf, and don’t change a thing as long as the suckers keep buying.

Until this season, Frontiere and Shaw had a royal scam going. With Robinson serving as a willing point man, the Rams had the best of both worlds: They won--and they did so at a fraction of the cost. The NFL has no Ralph Nader. The Rams could keep scrimping on the basic materials, substituting Styrofoam for steel, for as long as they could get away with it.

The con began as far back as Eric Dickerson, when the Rams refused to pay the best running back in their history, and maybe the league’s, what he wanted and traded him for Bell and a six-pack of draft choices.

It included the bizarre drafting of high-round longshots--Mike Schad of Queen’s University, Donald Evans of Winston-Salem State--because name-brand models had higher price tags.

It continued through the annual alienation of key veteran players--Kevin Greene, Jackie Slater, Henry Ellard--with time- and morale-draining holdouts.

And it peaked during the last off-season, when the Rams refused to draft or trade for any shred of defensive help.

If the fans could ignore the league’s 21st-ranked defense in 1989--28th against the pass--you can bet your Mickey Sutton Fan Club button the front office could.

Finally, this fall, the house of cards collapsed. In football, the showroom or the supermarket, you get what you pay for, and 2-5 in 1990 is precisely what the Rams have paid for.

The Dickerson trade, defended for years as the Rams’ building block for the ‘90s, has panned out and yielded precious little gold. With the three No. 1 draft choices they received for Dickerson, the Rams selected Gaston Green, Cleveland Gary and Aaron Cox. With the three No. 2s, the Rams picked Fred Strickland, Frank Stams and Darryl Henley.

Of the six, only Gary has made any kind of real impact--and that’s only when he’s able to hang onto the football. Green has been a bust. Cox has a terminal hamstring. Stams is a steady but unspectacular defender. Strickland and Henley can’t stay off injured reserve.

And their selection has been more trend than aberration.

In 1989, The Rams burned a No. 1 on Bill Hawkins and a No. 2 on Brian Smith. They were the great pass-rush hopes of the future, two reasons the Rams chose not to draft any pass-rushing help in 1990. Well, the future is now, the sacks are nowhere in sight, and the Rams can only wait for the 1991 draft, when they’ll have a chance to botch it up all over again.

Bad drafts have been compounded by bad financial decisions. Shaw will spend $700,000 for Curt Warner’s wounded knees but won’t part with the $1 million it would take to land a cornerback of Albert Lewis’ world-class skills. He loses a pivotal bidding war with San Francisco for free agent linebacker Matt Millen. He won’t trade or pay to replace such fallen defensive starters as Jerry Gray, Larry Kelm and Strickland.

You’ve already heard the standard Ram alibi: This football team is Frontiere’s livelihood, and she simply can’t compete with Eddie DeBartolo’s deep, corporate-lined pockets. Eddie can afford to lose money and win Super Bowls. Georgia is just trying to stay in business.

Well, you should examine these figures, recently printed in the Orange County Business Journal. They are projections of the Rams’ budget for the entire 1990 season.

Revenues (including gate and television broadcast receipts): $48.57 million.

Expenses (including salaries, travel and scouting): $30.21 million.

Estimated profit: $18.36 million.

That’s a lot a nose tackles.

It’s a very rudimentary equation: The Rams won’t win more until they spend more. They flimflammed everyone last season with their rise to the NFC championship game, but remember: If Steve Grogan completes one more pass on Christmas Eve, the Rams don’t make the playoffs at all. And with a little less luck, they also lose to a 1-15 Dallas team and to the rudderless New Orleans Saints twice.

In this light, no, 2-5 is not a shock. Neither is 2-6, once Warren Moon is done with his running and shooting today. The Rams exited 1989 with some major problem areas, refused to address them and now have a new address:

Last Place, NFC West.

Twin Peaks?

The Rams have settled for the valley instead.