Schedule Gives Rams Good Break
Through the benevolence of the NFL schedule maker and the Green Bay Packers, the Rams can now push the pause button instead of the panic, relax and heal instead of limp and languish.
On Monday, the first day of the rest of their season and their first day of rest in this bye week, Coach John Robinson said that Sunday’s 23-21 victory over the Packers had ended the Rams’ early-season woes.
The Rams are 2-3 after a difficult September, and Robinson said they will use the two weeks before they have to play again to sharpen the offense, tighten the defense and get threeor four players who have been too injured to play the last several weeks back in action.
“We’re starting on the process of coming back,” Robinson said. “We’re not ready to sound an all-clear that everything’s good right now, but we feel like we’re moving back in that direction.”
The Rams have been playing patchwork squads in the offensive and defensive lines because of injuries, having thrown rookies and backups into the fray against the Giants, Saints, and 49ers along the way.
The Rams suffered no serious injuries Sunday--”for the first time this year,” Robinson said--and right tackle Jackie Slater, defensive tackle Alvin Wright and left linebacker Fred Strickland all should be ready to return to the starting lineup for the next game, Oct. 13, against the currently winless San Diego Chargers.
The Rams hope the time off heals their still dormant offense, too, although healing bumps and bruises can be far less complicated than healing an offense gone wrong.
After five games, Jim Everett is still the only NFL starting quarterback who hasn’t thrown a touchdown pass and is showing the edginess that naturally accompanies such a drought. And the offense has scored only five touchdowns, all short runs by Robert Delpino. On Sunday, even in a victory, the offense converted only one of its four touchdown opportunities inside the Packers’ 20-yard line.
The Rams’ main emphasis is to snap Everett out of what Robinson now is calling simply “a fairly significant slump.”
Again on Sunday, Everett missed an open receiver heading toward the end zone. And he was visibly upset when the Rams called a draw on third and goal. He said later he badly wants his first touchdown pass.
“It’s coming slowly,” Robinson said when asked if he thinks there will be a flood of scoring passes once Everett gets his first. “The floodgates have not opened. I see some trickles of water coming through, but I don’t see the floodgates (opening) yet.
“You could say the long passes aren’t connecting either. Just things that you just kind of take for granted.
“When we had something deep, I used to . . . see the receiver open, say, ‘Touchdown.’ Used to have great fun yelling touchdown while the ball was still in the air. Now I yell it and everybody says, ‘Huh?’ ”
But Robinson said that Everett’s performance Sunday--he completed 18 of 29 passes for 241 yards and had one interception--was his best of the season. Everett got better pass blocking from his constantly changing offensive line but had to go on without wide receiver Flipper Anderson, who will miss at least two more games with a back injury.
“We’re all trying to get better,” Robinson said. “It’s been tense. I’m sure he’s tense. I know I’ve been. I think (Sunday’s probably was) the first game this year he can feel good about the game.”
On defense, after having held the Packers under 100 total yards through the first three quarters, the Rams surrendered two fourth-quarter touchdown drives by backup quarterback Blair Kiel that almost stole the game.
In the fourth quarters of the last three games, the Rams have been outscored 38-0, which suggests this isn’t solely a defensive problem but a joint final-act demise.
“I don’t know whether we’re playing with a lot of emotion and running out of gas,” Robinson said. “ . . . We’re trying to look at those issues.
“It’s not as though Green Bay did anything different, I think they just felt as though they were behind, they needed to throw every down, and we just didn’t respond to it very well.”