Gary Slips a Bit as Rams Rise : Football: Running back remains starter, but he has competition, and fumbles have not helped his cause.

In the darkest moments of this season, one thing that always seemed to shine clearly was that Cleveland Gary was and would be the Rams’ tailback from here to football eternity.

Gary was the man, the workhorse, the next of John Robinson’s 1,000-yard rushers, and if you doubted that, well, all the Ram coach did was keep giving him the ball and all Gary did was break tackles, pile up the numbers and score touchdowns.

Now, as the Rams’ season brightens in the glow of two consecutive victories, Gary’s individual star suddenly has dimmed, thanks to his recent fumbling plague and the emergence of a few other tailbacks.

Gary has fumbled nine times this season and lost five of them--including lost drops in each of the last three weeks, one of which Robinson concedes cost the Rams the Dallas game--and a possible three-game winning streak--last month. After fumbling on the second possession of their 38-23 victory over the Cleveland Browns last Sunday, Gary spent most of the rest of the game watching backup Gaston Green play effectively.

Monday, at his weekly media luncheon, Robinson did not exactly go out of his way to defend Gary, even as he was telling of his joy with his team’s upswing to 5-7. Robinson even suggested that the newest Ram tailback, Marcus Dupree, could start playing more.

The Rams will play the New Orleans Saints (5-7) Sunday in a game that for all intents will knock the loser out of the wild-card race, but it is not clear exactly who the Rams’ main rusher will be.

“They’ll both play,” Robinson said of Gary, who still retains at least his starting status, and Green. “I don’t have a real ability in my mind to go into a game and say I’m going to play this person this much or the second series.

“I will get Gaston in earlier. As you’ve seen over the last three, four weeks, he’s come in a game in the first quarter or early in the second. And I will continue to do that.”

Although Robinson still obviously would like Gary to do most of the work, he said that Gary has to learn that consistent fumbling cannot go unpunished.

Gary has gained 651 yards in 169 carries this year after missing training camp and the first few weeks of the season with a back injury, and Robinson emphasizes that the second-year player simply needs to grow as a runner.

Robinson praised Gary’s ability to gain yards the hard way, but gaining yards doesn’t help if the ball is rolling around under defensive linemen.

“He’s just got to hold the ball tighter,” Robinson said. “I’ve never been a coach who said, ‘Oh, you fumbled. You’re out.’ That’s bull, I think.

“But I think he’s going through a period where he has to become responsible in terms of the ball. And I’m not saying he’s irresponsible. I just think he’s learning. He’s learning that it’s important, that we lose the game when he fumbles, he comes out of the game when he fumbles.

“We lost a game because he fumbled. You know, he’d be a 1,000-yard rusher right now if he’d played the whole season, and if he’d been the ballcarrier (Sunday), he’d have had 130, 140 yards.”

Give Gary a full training camp, Robinson said, and then those bad habits should disappear.

“He’s not a very detail-oriented guy . . . but he’s really good,” Robinson said. “He’s a long way away from being what he will be. He’s going (up) as a runner and as a player. He just has got a ways to go.”

Green, the Rams’ No. 1 pick three seasons ago, gained 57 yards in 13 carries Sunday, pushing his season total to 194 yards in 44 carries, a 4.4-yard average. Green, who has never been able to establish himself with Robinson, seems at least to have caught his eye this time.

But Robinson didn’t sound as if he is ready to unleash Green, and for now, it appears that Green will continue in a subsidiary role. Green’s style of running is in direct contrast to Gary’s rough-and-tumble-for-four-yards method. Green, Robinson said, needs holes to run through, and that has never been Robinson’s style.

“He’s not the same kind of elusive person that (Dave Meggett of the New York Giants or Eric Metcalf of the Cleveland Browns) are,” Robinson said. “He’s a speed person. Those people are people that you cannot get a hold of, theoretically. . . . He’s a good player, but I don’t think we want to confuse him with those kinds of people.

“Gaston, if you give him room, has excellent speed and excellent acceleration. Gaston is a competent player, and by that I don’t mean to make that sound like blue-collar. By competent, I mean he can do a lot of things. He’s not a big load on pass-blocking . . . but he’s solid and knows what to do.”

Dupree, the third and most intriguing name in the tailback mix, has shown flashes of his old flair after coming back from a five-year-old knee injury, and Robinson doesn’t try to hide his excitement.

But with Gary needing the practice time to hone his game, and with Green forcing himself into the plan, Dupree may find the practice-field action limited simply because of the numbers.

“I think he’s getting pretty close to ready,” Robinson said. “He’s only been in a few plays, but he creates some stuff out there. That was kind of fun to see.”