Rams Drop the Ball in 38-17 Loss : Pro football: In game of 11 fumbles overall, Falcons take advantage of L.A. mistakes. Dupree runs for two touchdowns.
It was water torture, NFL exhibition style.
Drop . . . drop . . . drop . . .
Do you like fumbles, bumbles and other humbling stumbles? Is your idea of fun watching droppy, sloppy, choppy football?
If it is, this was your game, since the NFL, the Rams and the Atlanta Falcons probably don’t want their names associated with it.
By the time they stopped dropping the football in this NFL-starved city and the Falcons had beaten the Rams, 38-17, the teams had combined to fumble 11 times, losing nine of them.
“How many fumbles did we have, 10 or some unbelievable number?” asked Coach John Robinson when it was finally safe to stop counting.
Close enough. The Rams fumbled eight, lost six, and put up their hands afterward.
Tailback Marcus Dupree almost was a game by himself, and he only played the first half. Cleveland Gary, with whom Dupree is competing for the starting tailback job, sat out the game still nursing a tight muscle in his left leg.
Dupree, who gained 55 yards in 15 carries, gave up a touchdown on a fumble the first time he carried the ball, lost another fumble the eighth time, floated around the Falcons’ defense for a five-yard touchdown the 12th, and stomped over a Falcon for a 24-yard score the 13th.
The lesson? Do not blink when Marcus Dupree has the ball.
“The ball felt slick, and I rubbed my hands on my pads and made them wetter,” Dupree said with a sheepish smile afterward, explaining his problems by pointing to the humidity.
It was slippery enough out there to cause 11 fumbles?
“It was that slippery,” Dupree said, “believe me, it was that slippery.”
And once Dupree started the ball rolling, the Rams couldn’t stop it, adding six more without him.
Dupree’s first fumble came on an up-the-middle plunge when linebacker Wes Pritchett stripped the ball over to safety Tracey Eaton, who ran 20 yards for a 7-0 Falcon lead. The Falcons scored on the Rams’ next possession, too, when Mike Pringle came up the middle and blocked Dale Hatcher’s punt into the Rams’ end zone, where Bobby Butler fell onto it.
Three Ram fumbles and one Falcon fumble later, Dupree made his comeback.
His first touchdown was a breeze, a straight sweep around the right corner from short distance. But his second was the kind that evoked memories of bygone Dupree days.
He took a second-quarter handoff from Long up the middle, sliced through a hole, then made Eaton a very dizzy man.
“I tried to explode a little, but my right leg’s still a little sore,” Dupree said. “Just got through the line, and a guy (Eaton) was sitting there. I wasn’t going to let him stop me.”
Not to worry. Dupree, who came back last year after missing five seasons because of a serious left knee injury, didn’t slow down, crunching past Eaton and driving into the secondary. After that demolition, safety Joe Fishback’s diving attempt to stop him was useless. That touchdown tied the score, 14-14.
“Kind of reminded me of my Oklahoma days,” Dupree said.
Said Robinson: “I’m glad he got the opportunity to do the things he did in the game. He made a lot of errors, I think he came off the field feeling like a rookie, a rookie who had his first chance to really play. And he did some I thought outstanding things and some big mistakes.”
All in all, Robinson wasn’t too worried about his team’s fumble frequency, saying all the problems were correctable while praising the defense in its first game under coordinator Jeff Fisher.
Once the half was over (Atlanta led, 21-14, by that time) and Dupree and most of the Rams’ first-line defense was out of the game, the Rams’ ramshackle offensive line was swarmed by a continually blitzing Falcon defense, and the fumbles continued.
Long, in place of regular starter Jim Everett, played deep into the third quarter, completing eight of 17 passes before yielding to third-string quarterback Mike Pagel.
“It’s hard to get into a rhythm when they’re blitzing every play like they were,” Long said. “But you can get big plays when they’re doing that.
“We just kept waiting for something to pop. The ball popped (out), but we never did.”
Ram Notes
Because of injuries, tackle Gerald Perry (knee), guard Duval Love (knee), cornerback Darryl Henley (hamstring), guard Bern Brostek (eye), offensive lineman Jeff Pahukoa (knee) and receiver Greg Harris (knee) did not dress for Saturday night’s game. Center Doug Smith (ankle) dressed but did not play. Theo Adams started at left guard for Brostek, Trevor Ryals at center for Smith, and Latin Berry at right cornerback for Henley. . . . The attendance was 66,531, though more than 30,000 tickets were given away.