Stams on Top After Going Inside : Rams: A reserve outside linebacker last season, he’s now a starter and leads the team with 56 tackles.

Life on the outside is uncomplicated and largely free of double-team blocks, blind-side blows and 270-pound guards steaming straight into your chest.

Life on the inside, however, is a mess--and often rather painful. Knee injuries seem to hunt down and fell everybody who plays inside linebacker in the Rams’ 3-4 front sooner or later.

And linebacker Frank Stams, lucky guy, got moved from the outside to the inside last year, his rookie season, because there basically wasn’t anybody else fit enough. Forgive him if he felt like a volunteer at the Alamo.

And this year, he has played so well there after another wave of injuries--first Larry Kelm, then, when he got back, Fred Strickland--that Stams probably has locked himself into that position for the rest of his career.

Oh well, Stams says philosophically, it may not be as glamorous as blitzing the quarterback, but he is playing. And as his strong, team-leading 10-tackle performance against the New York Giants last Sunday showed, he is playing quality football heading into this Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys.

“It’s like a little kid playing with big kids--that’s the way it is,” Stams said. “You’re going to get better playing sooner and playing faster, so I think that’s what’s happening to me. It’s unfortunate those guys (Kelm and Strickland) got injured, but it gave me a chance to learn things faster and be in there sooner.

“It has accelerated, I think, the way I play . . . if I’m making any improvement at all.”

The Rams say there is no doubt Stams has improved from last year’s introduction to the middle.

Last year, Stams started three games, played in all 16, and was in on 27 tackles. This season, the 1989 second-round pick from Notre Dame has started all nine games and leads the team with 56 tackles. He is teamed with Kelm at inside linebacker.

“He’s a starter now,” said defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur. “Last year, he was in there as a stop-gap guy, and as soon as Kelm or Strickland got well, then they would go in there and play, and he’d be on special teams and not play.

“He’s playing, he’s taking every snap in practice, he’s in the games now. As a result, I think his production is showing it.”

Stams is the first to admit that it has been a bumpy transition from the outside rusher he was at Notre Dame to hurdling the mental complexities--not to mention trapping guards--presented him on the inside.

He has to make some of the defensive signal calls before the snap. He has to make sure he isn’t caught looking the wrong way when an offensive lineman comes looking for a target. And he has to do all this while adapting to never being able to free-lance in a wide-open space.

Also, Shurmur points out, Stams hasn’t yet had a full training camp as a 3-4 inside linebacker because in his rookie year he started on the outside and this year the Rams were toying with their since-ditched 4-3 alignment.

But for all that, in a mostly dreary Ram season, Stams has been one of the team’s few-- only? --twinkles.

“Yeah, I was kind of worried at first,” Stams said of the day he was told he was moving inside. “Were they happy with me at outside linebacker? All kinds of things run through your mind.

“But then you just go from there and say, ‘Hey, this is where they want me, and if I’m going to play, this is where I’m going to play.’ So then I just tried to take in everything they threw at me as much as as I could.”

Said Shurmur: “It’s vastly different. There isn’t any comparison between the two. Everybody says a linebacker. I think you’ve got to find out whether he’s an inside guy or an outside guy, then that determines it.”

Stams credits the late Carl Ekern, a long-time Ram inside linebacker and last year a volunteer assistant coach, for tutoring him on the basics of the position.

After last Sunday’s game, in which Shurmur said he thought Stams piled up even more tackles than the postgame tally, that’s where he’s going to stay.

“I think he’s a very good player there,” Shurmur said. “We’ve had a lot of guys playing in there, and I think he’s going to be one of those kind of guys before it’s done.

“He’s a deceiving player, because if you put him out there and time him and see how high he jumps, you’d say, ‘Oh, average.’ But you put him on the field and when everybody’s playing the game of football, then it’s much better than average.

“He’s an instinctive football player. A lot of guys have got great numbers, got great physiques, got a lot of things going for them, but when it comes to just kind of finding the guy with the ball, they fall a little short. They’re groove jobs. You’ve got to show them every step to the ball. Him, he gets to the ball.”

He may get to the ball fine from the inside, but Stams is pretty clear in saying that he wouldn’t mind doing it from another spot--if possible.

“I don’t feel that I’m just strictly an inside linebacker,” Stams said. “I feel comfortable at that position. I’m happy to be there and I like playing it. But I don’t feel that I’m strictly an inside linebacker. I feel if they asked me to play another position, I’d be happy to do that.”

Gee, wonder what position that might be?