Everyone in the Secondary Was Making Rookie Errors : Rams: Lyght is penalized for unnecessary roughness, but he wasn’t the only offender in loss to the Saints.

The Rams, those masters of the missed opportunity, did nearly everything they could to lose Sunday and somehow still had a chance to win in the final moments.

With slightly more than a minute to play, the Saints’ Tommy Barnhardt sent a high punt to the Ram seven-yard line, where Vernon Turner cradled the ball and took off on a 13-yard return before skipping out of bounds at the 20.

And then came the yellow flag. Safety Michael Stewart and cornerback Todd Lyght were involved in a scuffle with a couple of New Orleans players and Stewart was called for an unnecessary roughness foul.

Lyght said later that it was actually his fault, that he had retaliated to a punch thrown by a Saint player and drawn the penalty. In any case, it was yet another example of the Rams’ wont to do the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

And this one, as Coach John Robinson pointed out later, was simply stupid.

The Rams started at the 10 instead of the 20 and although their last-gasp drive in an attempt to tie the game fell far more than 10 yards short, it was another chapter in the 1991 Ram book, which should be titled “Fifty Ways to Leave Victory Behind.”

“We played hard enough and well enough to win in most cases,” Robinson said, “but when it comes down to the plays you have to make in a game, when it came down to it in this game and the Raider game and maybe some other games, too, we just had somebody get in a pushing match with somebody or make a mistake or do something that either gives the other team life or kills us.

“We just can’t keep doing that and expect to become a winning football team. We have to deal with this issue of competing mentally and competing in the clutch and learn to compete properly. Once we do, I think we’ll be a good team.”

Lyght, who made his first NFL start Sunday, slumped on the stool in front of his locker and tried to find the perspective to see this as a beginning and not simply another bad ending.

“One of the Saints’ players tried to catch me on the chin and I threw a combination of punches that was one too many for the officials and I got the flag. I knew it was me when the flag landed on my head.

“If we had come up 10 yards short of the goal line, I would’ve felt really bad, but it’s all part of being a rookie. I made a mistake and I won’t make it again.”

The rest of the Rams seemed destined to repeat their mistakes in this season of discontent. Clearly, this was an afternoon of misadventures for the entire Ram secondary.

Cornerback Darryl Henley was beaten on a third-and-nine play and then was called for pass interference on another third-down play as the Saints drove for what turned out to be the winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter.

Free safety Pat Terrell let Eric Martin get open on a third-and-six play for a 19-yard completion that allowed the Saints to trim another precious minute off the clock on their final possession.

And then there was Stewart, who seemed to be wedged in the middle of nearly every crucial play.

He picked off a Steve Walsh pass in the second quarter and lateraled to Lyght, who pitched back to Terrell, who dropped the ball, but the Rams recovered.

They couldn’t recover from the final play from scrimmage of the first half, however.

Walsh’s high, floating pass somehow got through the hands of both Henley and Stewart and into the hands of rookie Wesley Carroll for a 31-yard touchdown that put New Orleans ahead, 17-10, with 19 seconds left in the half.

“I thought I had my hands on ball and Mike thought he had his hands on the ball,” Henley said. “Either I knocked him off or he knocked me off and somehow the guy came down with it. He just made a great catch.”

And so it went. Stewart made a wicked hit on Carroll in the third quarter but nearly knocked himself out in the process. He regained his senses in time to lose them and join Lyght in an altercation that was ill-advised at best.

“We could have won this one at the end,” safety Anthony Newman said. “We just have to stop making mental mistakes and stupid mistakes as far as penalties and stuff.

“We beat ourselves again. Dumb penalties, blown coverages. They’re all stupid.”

Stewart, however, saw no need to analyze it all.

On Carroll’s touchdown catch before the half: “He caught it. We didn’t.”

On the series of mistakes that meant another defeat: “There’s no sense asking a bunch of questions, because there’s no answers. You can rationalize everything, but you just have to go out and win. And if you don’t win, you lose.”

That’s simple enough. And, with apologies to Magic Johnson, maybe the Rams will have to title this season’s highlight film “Losin’ Time.”