Rams Fumble Away a Game : NFL exhibition: They lose the ball five times in a 38-17 loss to Atlanta. Dupree rushes for 55 yards in 15 carries.
It was a water torture, NFL exhibition-game style.
Drop. . . drop. . . drop. . . .
You like fumbles, bumbles and other humbling stumbles? You like sloppy, choppy football? Is your idea of fun watching grown men take turns groping for lost possessions in the muggy Florida night?
If it is, this was your game because the NFL, the Rams and the Falcons probably don’t want their names associated with it. It was quite an exhibition, all right.
By the time they stopped fumbling in this NFL-starved city and the Falcons had beaten the Rams, 38-17, the two teams had combined to fumble 11 times, lose eight of them, and possibly frightened the fans in Jacksonville enough to never ask for NFL-quality football again.
“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 times and lost five of them, and threw up their hands afterward.
Tailback Marcus Dupree was a show all by himself, and he only played the first half. Cleveland Gary, with whom Dupree is competing for the starting tailback job and quite an accomplished fumbler on his own, sat out the game with 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 Falcon defense for a five-yard touchdown run the 12th, and stomped through the middle and 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 sheepishly afterward, explaining the game’s dose of dropsies by pointing out the humidity of the night.
Was it slippery enough out there to cause 11 fumbles?
“It was that slippery,” Dupree said, “believe me, it was that slippery.”
And once Dupree got the ball rolling, the Rams couldn’t stop it, dropping six more without him.
Dupree’s first fumble came on an up-the-middle plunge where linebacker West Pritchett stripped the ball straight to safety Tracey Eaton, who ran 20 yards for the game’s first touchdown. The Falcons scored on the Rams’ next possession, too, when Mike Pringle went untouched up the middle and blocked Dale Hatcher’s punt into the Ram end zone, where Bobby Butler fell on it.
After three Ram fumbles (one each by Flipper Anderson and starting quarterback Chuck Long, and Dupree’s second) and one by Falcon tailback Steve Broussard, Dupree atoned.
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 straight up the middle, sliced through a hole, then made Eaton a 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 straight through Eaton’s body into the secondary. After that demolition, safety Joe Fishback’s diving attempt to stop the runaway train was irrelevant. Dupree’s second touchdown tied the game.
“Kind of reminded me of my Oklahoma days,” Dupree said, recalling his stellar days as a collegiate running back almost 10 years ago.
“I’m glad he got the opportunity to do the things he did in the game,” Robinson said of Dupree. “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 outstanding things and some big mistakes.”
Robinson wasn’t too worried about his team’s fumble-frequency, saying the problems were correctable while praising the play of his defense in its first game under new defensive coordinator Jeff Fisher.
the second half, when Dupree and most of the Ram first-line defense were out of the game, the Rams’ ramshackle offensive line was swarmed by a continuously blitzing Falcon defense and the offense kept on fumbling.
Long, playing for regular starter Jim Everett, played well into the third quarter before yielding to third-string quarterback Mike Pagel. Long completed eight of 17 passes, made some crisp throws on deep routes, and looked sharp considering he was under pressure and his offense fumbled eight times.
“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. That’s what we wanted to do.
“We just kept waiting for something to pop. The ball popped, but we never did.”
The Rams’ newfangled defense, meanwhile, stayed fairly basic. Against the first-line defense, the Falcons scored only when the Rams’ offense handed it to them.
The Rams got a sack from Bill Hawkins, had decent pressure on rookie Falcon quarterback Brett Favre, and had two interceptions called back.
Notes
Due to 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 was scheduled to play only in an emergency. Theo Adams started at left guard for Brostek, Trevor Ryals at center for Smith, and Latin Berry at right cornerback for Henley. . . . The attendance at the Gator Bowl was 66,531, though more than 30,000 tickets were given away.
Rookie Falcon receiver Mike Pritchard made the most of the Rams’ second-line defense, catching three touchdown passes--two from rookie Brett Favre and one from Gilbert Renfroe.
Injury Report: Rookie cornerback Robert Bailey broke a bone in the second finger of his right hand, and should be out for two weeks. Safety Alfred Jackson sprained his right ankle and probably will miss a week.
In the Rams’ punting battle, Dale Hatcher punted all seven times, for a 38.1-yard average, not including the block. Keith English did not punt. Robinson said that because of the pressure Atlanta was putting on the kick, he wanted to stay with Hatcher.