RAMS : Disaster Striking All Fronts Now
One step forward, two steps back. That’s the Rams’ favorite dance this season. It has been a hypnotic sort of march into oblivion, like a legion of zombies in retreat.
When the opportunity for failure has presented itself, the Rams have almost always snatched it. And this malaise has spread throughout the team. Now, even the former league-leading offense is infected.
“Whenever it seems to come down to a crucial play, the play that decides the winning and the losing of the game, we seem to make the wrong move, pretty consistently and pretty much throughout our team,” Coach John Robinson said. “I think we’re all sick and tired of it.”
This Ram team doesn’t just wait for crunch time to crumble, however. They’ve turned self-destruction into a 3 1/2-hour art form and Sunday’s 24-21 loss to the Dallas Cowboys is a prime example.
First Quarter: Jim Everett throws the ball over the head of a wide-open Robert Delpino on a third-and-three play near midfield. A decent throw means a sure first down and probably a 20- to 30-yard gain. Then Ram cornerback Darryl Henley falls face first in the end zone on the touchdown pass to Cowboy wideout Michael Irvin.
Second Quarter: Linebacker Mike Wilcher slams into Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman, who lets loose with a 10-yard lob that descends among three Ram linebackers. There isn’t a Cowboy in sight, but Kevin Greene manages to out-jump Frank Stams and Larry Kelm to bat down the ball. A couple of minutes later, Everett hooks up with Flipper Anderson for a 79-yard touchdown pass, but the play is called back because Aaron Cox moved too soon.
Third Quarter: Cox and Anderson drop passes and the Rams are penalized for a face-mask infraction, holding and an illegal block.
Fourth Quarter: Cleveland Gary fumbles on the Cowboys’ five-yard line. Dallas recovers and drives 89 yards for the game-winning field goal.
Otherwise, the Rams played pretty well.
“When you start looking at the film and break down things, you can point to things that are good,” Robinson said. “You say, ‘Hey we got 160 (actually 168) yards rushing. That’s good. We held them to less than three yards (2.3) a rush. That’s good.’ But we gave away more than 150 yards in our own passing, with the penalty on the touchdown pass and several dropped passes and the one pass where Jim had Bobby Delpino wide open on a blitz. We’ve had more balls dropped in the last two weeks than I’ve seen in 2 1/2 years here. We should have had 450 yards and we wind up with around 300 (292).”
Gary’s fumble, of course, was the crowning blow. And while Robinson acknowledges the impact of Gary’s fumble, he also maintains that it is pure folly to say the Rams problems began and ended with a loose football near the goal line.
“He was trying to squeeze through the hole and the ball got caught on the back of one of our players,” Robinson said. “It just popped out. But part of his responsibility is being able to make the plays and hold onto the football.
“But it’s important that I convey that this has nothing to do with an individual or a group of individuals. It’s all of us.”
Robinson says he has never been this baffled by a team during his career. He probably won’t find any solutions by consulting his players.
Offensive tackle Jackie Slater: “The bottom line is execution. We just aren’t executing.”
Defensive tackle Doug Reed: “It’s just a matter of us playing together a lot more and developing some kind of glue, some cohesiveness.”
Tight end Pete Holohan: “We aren’t making plays and we especially aren’t making them when we have to.”
Everett: “I don’t have any answers. We just aren’t playing competitive football.”
The Rams have had their share of bad breaks this season, but Robinson is hoping nobody in the organization will let sour grapes replace their champagne dreams.
“One can delude our situation by saying we’ve been unlucky, and I think we have been unlucky,” he said, “but we probably deserve to be unlucky the way we’re playing.”