The Flip-Flop Hasn’t Meant Success : Rams: Last season, the offense carried the defense. Now it is the other way around, but still 2-3.

Not so long ago, the Ram coordinator was beleaguered and cutting his game plan down to the bare bones in an attempt to nudge his unit back to respectability.

On one side of the ball, the Rams were controlling the tempo, playing confidently, looking as if the good times would roll on forever. On the other, though, it was desperation time, and the roof was caving in.

John Robinson swore then, back in the early part of last season, that his team would never again be so unbalanced, so out of kilter, so wildly out of control.

He got his wish, even if the product isn’t quite what he had in mind.

Robinson reasoned that the offense, though high-powered, lacked the consistent running game that could protect a defense shellshocked by constant poundings, and set about to change that.

While he was at it, he also changed defensive staffs, bringing in Jeff Fisher and his attacking scheme from Philadelphia to replace Fritz Shurmur’s soft-zone style, hoping to restore life to a dead unit.

Through the first five games of this season, the Rams once again have a coordinator frantically scaling his game plan back to the basics, and are almost totally dependent on the other unit.

But suddenly, it is the Ram defense that is the backbone of the team, and it is the offense that clutches today’s bye, gasping and groaning, deeply in need of some firepower to complement the rest of the team.

“We need to get the offense moving, but we don’t have to play as good as we’ve played in the past,” offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese said. “We don’t have to play at that pace.

“This team is structured a little differently now. Like anything else, I think you have to sort of play to your strengths. Right now our strengths are special teams and defense.”

With a quarterback who has been unable to throw a touchdown pass this season, an offensive line shuffled beyond recognition and a defense playing nearly mistake-free football, the Rams, in a year, have turned themselves upside down.

The 2-3 record doesn’t seem much different from the start to last year’s 5-11 plunge, but the team is altogether different from the 1990 version.

The Ram offense has become boring. They don’t lose 34-31 games, they play games with scores in the teens. They go to New York and beat the Giants, but can’t score more than one offensive touchdown against the Green Bay Packers.

Quarterback Jim Everett has completed 55.3% of his passes, none of which has been longer than 41 yards--and that was to a running back. Through five games last season, he had 11 touchdown passes.

The entire offense has five touchdowns in five games, all on short runs. The defense is undersized and outmanned by talented offenses but somehow has held on until the fourth quarter, when the Rams have been outscored, 48-6.

“To be honest, yeah, I think the defense is playing a whole lot better than we thought,” said cornerback Darryl Henley, who leads the team with two interceptions.

“Some people said, ‘Hey, we don’t know if those guys have the personnel to play like Philly.’ We just have that kind of team where we have 11 guys who are almost the same. Maximum effort.”

But Fisher doesn’t accept the current level of play as satisfactory.

“I think if you take that approach, then you’re going to sell yourself short,” Fisher said. “I think the approach you have to take defensively, as opposed to holding in there and keeping it close, is winning it on defense.

“We need to get out and win a game defensively--outright outscore the opponent on defense.”

Meanwhile, the defense waits for the offense that used to carry the team to wake up.

“It makes it weird because Jim can throw with the best, but he’s just struggling,” Henley said. “They’re all struggling.

“Hey, man, we’ve struggled in the past, and they’ve scored 39 points a game, it seemed like, when we were the ones struggling. We just have to hang on defensively. Just hang in there, and when they get it right, we’ll have something.

“I’m just waiting for the one game, waiting for them just--whoosh!--we’ll say, ‘OK, now everything’s OK.’ I figure we’re 2-3 and they haven’t done half the things they can do.”

In an era of defenses concentrating on denying big plays, the Rams have lacked rhythm, missing those rare chances to pop a long pass when they arisen.

Robinson wanted to make sure the Rams could run the ball, but the Rams are averaging only 3.5 yards per carry in a league that averages four.

The Rams were unsteady in exhibitions, but assumed they would fire out as usual once the season began.

“You just sort of think you’re going to do it,” Zampese said. “When you’ve had success doing it, you just think it’s going to right itself, just sort of happen. But it didn’t happen.

“It’s forced us to really go back and almost treat it like we’re starting again. We’re not starting again, but it’s almost that mentality. We’re going back to the first little things we did when we started doing it.”

So after an off-season of giant strides, the team waits to take the little steps that could inch it back into competition for a playoff spot.

What a Difference a Year Makes Comparing the offense statistics of the 1990 and 1991 Ram teams. Average net offensive yards per game RAMS ‘90: 339.4 ‘91: 258.8 OPPONENTS ‘90: 338.2 ‘91: 300.4 Average points scored per game by offense RAMS ‘90: 20.7 ‘91: 11.8 OPPONENTS ‘90: 25.7 ‘91: 21.8 Passing yards per attempt RAMS ‘90: 7.16 ‘91: 6.77 OPPONENTS ‘90: 7.87 ‘91: 7.42 Average net yars passing per game RAMS ‘90: 236.6 ‘91: 166.8 OPPONENTS ‘90: 235.1 ‘91: 185.4 Third Down efficiency RAMS ‘90: 38.2 ‘91: 32.2 OPPONENTS ‘90: 42.8 ‘91: 30.2