There’s No Light in Rams’ Tunnel : Pro football: They sleepwalk through a 31-14 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, their eighth in a row.
The Rams, who ran out of hope long ago, ran out of chances to shine in front of the home crowd Sunday with a dreary performance that invoked the essence of this dark season.
With what has become their trademark sloppiness, the Rams (3-11) stumbled to 31-14 loss at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons (9-5), who suddenly are best of the West.
By halftime, thanks to a lost fumble on their first play, a blocked punt and general team-wide ennui, the Rams had fallen behind by 24-7, giving Coach John Robinson and his players a full half to ponder their uncertain futures.
Before a near-silent Anaheim Stadium crowd of 35,315, the Rams matched their worst losing streak--eight--since 1965, and have two road games to go to reach double figures.
A Ram front office, stretching to see the smallest of improvements as it ponders ending Robinson’s nine-year run, witnessed no such thing.
Robinson, in the middle of his long walk off a shortening plank, said nothing about his private thoughts in his terse post-game news conference, and passed on a question that suggested this might be his final time as Ram coach in this stadium.
But for his dazed players, the self-examination is now fully underway.
“You bet there’s a cloud over us,” tailback Robert Delpino said. “It’s our own cloud. We’ve done this to ourselves. Today, it was ironic what the weather was, considering the situation the Rams are in, that we’re all in.
“It was a ‘doomy’ day--gloomy, dark, overcast. And we played like that. Gloomy.”
Right tackle Jackie Slater, their oldest and proudest player, simply dropped on his stool, stared blankly ahead and sounded very much like a 36-year-old who realizes his team has quit for good.
“It’s disheartening,” Slater said. “This is a very, very agonizing defeat, not so much because we lost, but because we just didn’t play with anywhere near the effort level we had to have.
“This was a clear-cut case of us not giving what it takes, not having the will to get it done.”
The Rams’ slide has had its moments--a near-defeat of the Raiders Oct. 20 that started it--and its more absurd moments, but Sunday was perhaps the most telling beginning-to-end sleepwalk.
There was the center-snap fumble on the first play of the game, an echo of the Rams’ first foible of the season in their season-opening loss to the Phoenix Cardinals.
As on that one, new center Tom Newberry and quarterback Jim Everett got mixed up, and Everett thrust the ball into the air as he was trying to grab it. Falcon linebacker Tim Green recovered at the Ram 19, and six plays later Norm Johnson kicked a 21-yard field goal.
Two series later, new Ram punter Barry Helton’s kick was blocked by Brian Jordan, setting up tailback Steve Broussard’s one-yard touchdown run.
The Rams drove for a Everett-to-Pat Carter six-yard score on their next possession, but Atlanta scored a touchdown on the next drive, and then, aided by a failed Ram fourth-down try, scored again with less than a minute left in the half.
On that aborted Ram drive, they actually had the spark of a winner for a moment, successfully completing a 22-yard pass from Helton to Ernie Thompson off a fake punt into Falcon territory. But the Rams stalled there, and Everett’s fourth-down pass was hurried and hopelessly under-thrown in the face of an unblocked blitz.
“We made an error (on the play). A guy (Henry Ellard) went in motion. He just forgot what motion he was supposed to go in and ran the wrong way and collided with a lineman, who then didn’t get out to block the guy,” Robinson said. “Some weird stuff, boy, weird stuff.
“When you play a team like Atlanta that’s on the edge, the game can move rapidly in either direction, for them or against them.”
The 91-yard Falcon touchdown drive that started the second half and made the score 31-7--culminating on quarterback Chris Miller’s second touchdown pass of the day, this one to Mike Haynes--iced the Falcons’ improbable rise to the top of the division and fourth consecutive victory.
With New Orleans losing its fourth in a row earlier Sunday, the Falcons and Saints are 9-5, and Atlanta has the tie-breaker advantage because of its superior division record.
The Rams can find their only advantage in the truth that there are only two more games to endure.
“It’s agonizing,” Delpino said. “We’re all tired of hearing if there’ll be a coaching change, and who it will be (to replace Robinson). Unfortunately, we’re in a situation where we’ve got to hear that stuff.
“We players are playing so poorly it’s reflecting on the coaching staff. The last four weeks, we’ve really been atrocious, really, really terrible. And that’s me, that’s my teammates, everybody.
“I feel for the coach. I really do.”
Ram Notes
Henry Ellard barely was able to prolong his team-record 78-game regular-season streak of games in which he has caught at least one pass. Ellard didn’t catch a pass until there were only three minutes left in the game, and finished with two for the day. . . . The Rams have scored a combined 40 points in their last four games, while yielding 112. . . . The 31-14 score Sunday was the same as the Rams’ earlier loss to Atlanta this season. . . . The Rams did not win a division game this season. . . . Jim Everett, who has had many of the worst games of his career against the Falcons, was seven for 16 for 109 yards Sunday.
* WORDS TO WISE: In his manner of speaking, John Robinson says much. C15