Rarely Has a Game Meant This Much to So Many Rams

Thanks; they needed that. The Rams needed a victory the way a drunk needs a pot of coffee. They were reeling. They were wobbling. They could scarcely put one foot in front of another without fumbling or stumbling or making shambling fools of themselves, which was their condition last Monday in Pittsburgh.

“Most definitely, it was not what you would call a pleasant week,” running back Cleveland Gary said.

At stake for the Rams six days later at Anaheim Stadium was their very self-respect, which was hanging not by a thread, but by the seams of a football that Houston’s Warren Moon aimed into their end zone. One more loss would have left them 2-6 and too sick. Had it not been for Bobby Humphery and a save-the-day play, this team could have discovered what lies below rock bottom.

Fortunately, Humphery sprang forward like a beached whale. And the ball flopped away, harmlessly. And the Rams foiled the Oilers, 17-13. And they actually were left looking forward to--rather than dreading--next week’s appointment with Lawrence Taylor and the New York Giants, who would have lined up against a Ram team with chins so low, the horns on the helmets would have been pointing in a different direction.

Sunday’s success meant so much to so many.

--To Cleveland Gary, the man named for two cities, who looked so much better for Los Angeles against Houston than against Pittsburgh. Eighty-seven yards rushing with a touchdown. Three caught passes. This from the same man who in the Steel City handled the football like a hot rivet.

“Most definitely, it was time to do some soul-searching,” Gary said.

--To the Ram defense, which had recently made Raggedy-Andy quarterbacks such as Bubby Brister and Jim Harbaugh look like golden boys. This time, they kept Moon and the Oilers from scoring more than one touchdown, still not making enough good plays, yet at least making the most important ones.

“We owed our fans something better than they’ve been getting,” Humphery said.

--To Jim Everett, the quarterback who was so uncharacteristically awful at Pittsburgh that he had to be pulled from the game, something the Rams do about twice each decade. Everett wasn’t magnificent Sunday, but he was accurate and commanding and sometimes that’s enough.

“About time our luck changed,” Everett said.

--And to John Robinson, the coach, the guy who had run out of answers as to why a football team so good had gone so bad. His players gave him the game ball. They didn’t fumble it. They made him feel as though maybe, just maybe, this NFL season is just at the halfway point and not the point of no return.

“We’re not going to dissect this in terms of who did good and who did bad,” Robinson said. “This was a win we needed desperately and a win we got. “The game gives us life.”

The Rams were in danger of going from butting heads to becoming butts of jokes. They were doing worse than just losing games; they were taking prime-time beatings, making experts and amateurs alike wonder how they ever could have overestimated these guys so completely.

Gary played before the largest audience of his life during last Monday’s TV game and emerged from it with the reputation of a fumbler. Forgotten temporarily was his wonderful effort of the previous week against Atlanta. Suddenly he was the guy Robinson had to bench before three fumbles could turn into four, a guy whose fingers seemed so unsteady, you wondered if he could crack open a safe given the combination.

Against Houston, Gary did not exactly have Krazy Glue on his fingertips. Even on his touchdown, after breaking the so-called plane for the score, the ball squirted free from Gary’s so-called grip. And then there was a pass he caught and then surrendered in the third period, when Houston’s Al Smith knocked Cleveland halfway to Akron.

“Hardest hit I’ve taken since I’ve been in the NFL, and one I won’t forget,” Gary said.

The good news was that when the Rams needed to be particularly sure-footed and sure-handed, guarding a four-point lead from their own territory with 6 1/2 minutes to go, they gave the football to Gary without apparent fear. As he broke tackles and veered to the outside, one could sense fans in the stands saying: “Fall down on it! Fall down on it!” They didn’t want extra yardage; they wanted safekeeping.

Poor Cleveland. In the minutes before the game began, he took a pitchout during a warmup drill, slipped on damp grass and pitched face forward. He looked anxious, even if he insisted later that he wasn’t.

“I felt fine,” Gary said. “No pressure. Absolutely none. Most definitely, we were more or less stunned by what happened in Pittsburgh. But even in our adverse situation we stuck together as teammates, and that’s what it takes.”

No, what it takes is playing better together. But hey, one thing at a time.