ANALYSIS : Reaching for the Stars Dickerson Trade Gave Rams a Chance to Build Dynasty With Draft Picks, but the Result Has Been Descent Into Mediocrity

It was the greatest trade in the history of the franchise. And it exposed the Rams’ greatest weaknesses for all the world to see.

It probably was the last thing the Ram hierarchy unanimously and enthusiastically approved, and it might lead to the breakup of a management team that has run the club for almost a decade.

The uncertainty about the future of John Robinson, the two-year plummet into the league’s underclass, the brief, shining playoff moment in 1989 . . . everything that has happened to the Rams since pivots on one decision.

The trade. The trade.

Modern Ram history begins Oct. 30, 1987, the day the Rams sent Eric Dickerson to the Indianapolis Colts, and got a shot at greatness in return.

It was painful to give up the NFL’s best runner, but the Rams’ John Shaw demanded and got everything they could have dreamed of: three No. 1 draft picks, three No. 2s, Greg Bell and Owen Gill.

This, the Rams agreed, was going to hoist the franchise into the title chase for the foreseeable future.

All they had to do was use the picks wisely. All they had to do was blend the talent already on the team--including a second-year quarterback named Jim Everett--with the young players destined to fill their roster well into the ‘90s.

All they had to do was not blow it, and with nine first- and second-round picks--including their own--in two seasons, how could they?

“It’s disappointing to watch what’s happened since ‘89,” Shaw says now, in the midst of an organizational review to correct what went wrong.

“We had a lot of high picks and the team hasn’t performed well since then. But I don’t think you can say that the coaches or your personnel can go that bad overnight.

“It’s really hard to say exactly what it is that caused this team to go through such a reversal.”

But blow it they did, turning an NFC title-game appearance almost overnight into an 8-19 post-1989 record. Theirs is the story of how the West was lost.

WHAT THEY NEEDED WAS A PLAN

The measure of how fast and far the Rams have fallen is reflected in their reluctance to discuss the past.

Ask John Robinson what he remembers about the days and months and decisions surrounding the Dickerson deal, and he sounds like Ronald Reagan testifying before an Iran-Contra prosecutor.

“I just can’t remember,” Robinson says. “I don’t know. We could go into the archives and pull out the historical documents and see what I said, which might’ve been baloney at the time.

“It’s not very important to me.”

This week, Everett declined to answer any questions not pertaining to Monday night’s game against the 49ers.

But back in the fall of 1987, the Rams sounded full of optimism. Losing Dickerson, a man born to run in a Robinson offense, cost the Rams their immediate playoff hopes, but his constant contract complaints and public bitterness had grown so annoying that even his prodigious talents were no longer worth the frustration.

When he said of a play call, “the coach can go run 47-Gap himself,” Dickerson’s Ram days were numbered. He was traded was traded about a week later.

“Really, I was thinking . . . we got a great football player when we made the trade,” Colt General Manager Jim Irsay says. “And I knew there was potential--but a lot of uncertainty--with the Rams’ side of it.

“It’s like I feel now with Tampa’s (No. 1 pick) we got for (Chris) Chandler. Are we gloating, someone asked me? Not at all. It all depends what we do with that pick.

“It’s who you take with those players that make the difference. We’ve got a great pick for Chandler, but also a great chance to blow it. Whenever you get picks, there’s an uncertainty there.”

While the Colts gained instant contender status by mortgaging their future, the Rams basked in league-wide praise. This was a team that already had Everett, had brought in offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese, and had made the playoffs four consecutive times before falling short in ’87.

Add six premium draft choices to that mix, general managers said, and the Rams would rule the roost for years.

“At the time, we thought it was an opportunity to improve the team substantially through a number of high draft picks,” Shaw says. “We certainly were excited by the opportunity . . . “

The Rams apparently had everything. Everything, that is, except the one thing they most desperately needed: a coherent, long-range plan, by someone willing to stake his reputation on it, for using the picks.

They could have gone the route of their rivals, the 49ers, who simply drafted the best player available each time their turn came up.

In 1986, Bill Walsh, then the 49er coach, parlayed a series of trades into perhaps the most complete draft ever--Charles Haley, John Taylor, Tim McKyer, Tom Rathman and others--then picked up rising defensive lineman Pierce Holt and versatile linebacker Bill Romanowski in ’88 after the Rams had bypassed each several times.

Meanwhile, the Rams lurched along, never sticking to one pattern, going for speed at times, for blitzing linebackers at others, for undersized defensive linemen at still others.

They clearly needed defensive linemen, yet passed on Michael Dean Perry and every other defensive lineman on the draft board five times in the ’88 draft, choosing instead Gaston Green, Aaron Cox, Fred Strickland, Flipper Anderson and Anthony Newman.

They badly wanted to bring in a young 1,000-yard runner to replace Dickerson, wasted two No. 1 picks trying to get one, then ended up playing the veteran throw-in, Bell, for two seasons.

They knew they didn’t have dominating talent, yet convinced themselves that all they had to do was fill in the little pieces and they could finally knock off the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC West.

Wasn’t there some sort of plan?

“I just don’t know,” Robinson says. “I think when you’re in the middle of something, you’re flailing away, anyway. You don’t say, ‘OK, here’s how it is . . . ‘ “

Maybe the worst thing that could have happened to the Rams was their rise to the playoffs in 1988.

With Bell emerging as a consistent back, an overachieving defense scrapping through game after game, and Everett showing flashes of brilliance, the Rams went 10-6 and earned a wild-card berth.

They were beaten by Minnesota in that wild-card game but it wasn’t considered serious, merely part of the learning process leading to eventual success. Rebuild? How could the Rams rebuild after a 10-6 season?

Then, in 1989, thanks to a magnificent season by Everett, the Rams sprinted to the NFC title game, where a loss to the 49ers only further convinced them that they were approaching greatness.

But they got careless, Robinson acknowledges, even if there was a sneaking suspicion that luck was the biggest factor of all in 1989.

The defense was skin and bones. Robinson really didn’t believe in Bell as the tailback. The lowly Patriots had almost kicked them out of the playoffs on the final Sunday of the regular season. And the Eagles and Giants both had misplayed their postseason chances to beat the Rams.

But so what? With the success coming so rapidly after trading Dickerson, the Rams couldn’t help thinking everything was going to be great.

“Overall, it was a positive feeling,” Robinson says. “And we came right back and were successful right away. I think that was probably the surprise, that we would come back quickly.”

The die was cast. The Rams became Everett’s team, dependent on passing. The team drafted finesse defensive players over and over because it assumed that all the unit needed was a little brushing.

A RUDDERLESS DRAFT

The Rams figured that once their young players grew up, Joe Montana’s hold the NFL would end. They had all those picks. As long as the young talent came through, so would the Rams.

But all of those picks simply spotlighted the team’s weakest areas: choosing the players to draft, then deciding how to use them.

There never was, and never has been, a clear public perception of where the draft buck stops. Is it Shaw? Robinson? Or John Math, the player personnel director?

There never was a public perception because there never really was a clear answer. Sometimes Robinson made the choice, sometimes Math did. Sometimes nobody knew exactly who had made the choice, the Rams picking whomever they thought would cause the least bickering.

The Rams’ record under Shaw-Robinson-Math before the Dickerson trade was spotty--Mike Schad in the first round in ‘86, Donald Evans in the second round in ‘87, both of whom were gone a few years later. But at times it was inspired--Kevin Greene in the fifth-round of 1985, Tom Newberry a round after Schad, Michael Stewart in 1987’s eighth round.

Under the gun, though, in the crucial two years, the consensus approach reacted poorly to stress.

To this day, sources who were in the Ram draft room when it happened say they do not know exactly how the Rams came to draft Gaston Green with their top pick--14th overall--in the 1988 draft and not John Stephens or Thurman Thomas.

Robinson and Math have never been close--Robinson is garrulous, Math very shy--and their lack of communication apparently doomed the Rams to a series of questionable picks, Green being perhaps the best example.

Math and Shaw apparently took Green, thinking that Robinson wanted him. Robinson, however, took an almost immediate dislike to Green’s running style, almost never played him in Green’s three seasons with the Rams, and privately said that Green wasn’t his choice. Green is now flourishing with the Broncos, in an entirely different offense.

But if his style didn’t match the Rams’, why draft him? Did anybody know?

In a process that demands accountability, the Rams apparently had none. When the New York Giants make a pick, it is General Manager George Young’s pick, good or bad. It was the same in San Francisco when Bill Walsh was building his dynasty.

When the Rams picked, the decision-makers searched harder for safe picks than for potential.

Defensive end Bill Hawkins was a safe pick in the first round of 1989, an effective college player. But his size and strength limitations meant he did not project into any sort of NFL greatness.

Tailback Cleveland Gary was a safe choice five picks later because he was a physical specimen who could do a lot of things. But was there really a need for him with Bell, Green and Robert Delpino already aboard?

Defensive lineman Brian Smith was a safe pick in that draft’s second round because he looked like a pass rusher, even if there was no evidence that he had the desire to add 30 pounds and crash into pro blockers.

The Rams were safe, and sorry.

“I think maybe we’re somewhat disappointed in the results of those drafts,” Robinson says. “We obviously had some things not go quite like we hoped for. But . . . “

Out of the two-year bumper crop, the Rams currently have one productive starting cornerback, Henley; one starting linebacker, Strickland; one starting tailback, 1988 fifth-rounder Delpino; one starting receiver, Anderson; one backup linebacker, Stams; one backup tailback, Gary; one backup safety, Newman; one backup receiver, Cox, and two backup defensive linemen, Hawkins and ’88 No. 3 Mike Piel.

That’s it. No superstars, merely a few quality players, and the rest journeymen.

Shaw says: “I think at this point, you’d say that the results we’ve gotten from the players selected have been below average.”

So is the Rams’ record the last two years.

WIN WITH JIM?

After Everett’s 4,000-yard performance in 1989, the Rams assumed he would become “the next great quarterback.” If Montana could win Super Bowls without a running game, well, so could the Rams with Everett as the offense developed around him.

But Everett proved more fragile than that. In 1990, with Bell banished to the Raiders, Curt Warner playing temporarily and Gary being groomed for full-time work, it all collapsed: Everett’s confidence, Warner’s career, Gary’s ability to hold onto the ball, the Rams’ season.

Everett threw six fewer touchdown passes than he had the season before, and 33 more incompletions. His efficiency rating dropped more than 11 points. With defenses keyed to put pressure on him, Everett’s awkwardness under fire threw everything out of whack.

The Rams didn’t have a 1,000-yard rusher for the first time under Robinson, and the resulting burden that put on Fritz Shurmur’s bend-but-don’t-break zone defense broke it clean.

The 5-11 season cost Shurmur his job, brought in Jeff Fisher’s attack-style defense and convinced Robinson that he couldn’t depend on Everett to win games on his own.

But 11 games into this season, the Rams are confronting a new reality: They don’t have the players to play Fisher’s physically demanding defense, and they don’t have the players to run the football consistently enough to keep Everett from having to shoulder more of a load than he can handle.

All of those years of safe drafting had take their toll.

Players who physically project as NFL dominators are almost always underachievers at school, and teams that take them are selecting risks. Jerome Brown was a 300-pound risk for the Eagles. Michael Dean Perry, 310, was a risk for the Browns. Jerry Ball, also 300 pounds and taken 16 picks behind 245-pound Donald Evans, was a risk for the Detroit Lions. All three are Pro Bowl defensive tackles.

“What we lack is the physical players right now,” Robinson says. “We lack the size, the power player.”

He also says he does not know how quickly the Rams can acquire such players.

CHANGES

The Rams did not tiptoe into mediocrity. They barreled in, full-throttle, and only now are realizing how they got there and considering plans to escape.

During the last few weeks, they have been meeting to redesign how they run the draft. They are moving away from what they consider Math’s eccentric style to a more analytical method.

And in a transitional year, the Rams seem to have brought in a solid crop from this season’s draft, led by Todd Lyght and followed up by Roman Phifer, Robert Young and Robert Bailey.

Robinson, if he isn’t fired at the end of the year, will apparently have less say-so in draft matters--which wasn’t a subject he could whip up a great deal of interest in, anyway, Ram sources suggest.

If Robinson is fired, someone with a stronger sense of direction and leadership almost certainly will be brought in.

After nine-plus years, the organization is almost unanimous--Robinson, of course, is the chief dissenter--in believing that he no longer has the energy or vision to lead the team.

“The organization will review the situation at the end of the year and try to assess the reasons for the failures of the past two years,” Shaw says.

The Rams had a great shot at greatness more than four years ago. They missed, badly. Now they can only hope to do better when the next one comes along. If it comes along.

Building Blocks

A look at the players who came to the Rams in the Eric Dickerson trade:

ACQUIRED

* Greg Bell: Running back played with Rams 1987-89, rushing for 2,375 yards (twice for more than 1,000 yards--1,212 in 1988 and 1,137 in ‘89) in 568 carries for a 4.2 average and scoring 31 touchdowns. Became a Plan B free agent, signed with Raiders, now out of football.

* Owen Gill: Running back did not play a down in ’87 and was released after the season.

DRAFTED

From Indianapolis: * 1988 First Round--Aaron Cox. Arizona State. Backup receiver with Rams, hampered by nagging injuries. In 3 1/2 seasons he has 77 receptions for 1,365 yards and eight touchdowns.

* 1988 Second Round--Fred Strickland. Purdue. Linebacker.

* 1989 Second Round--Frank Stams. Notre Dame. Linebacker.

From Buffalo (acquired when Indianapolis sent unsigned linebacker Cornelius Bennett to Bills): * 1988 First Round--Gaston Green. UCLA. Running back traded to Denver Broncos where he has rushed for 790 yards (4.7 yards per carry) despite missing three games.

* 1989 First Round--Cleveland Gary. Miami. Running back.

* 1989 Second Round--Darryl Henley. UCLA. Starting cornerback.