Rams Beat Rush, Give the Vikings Early Holiday Gift : Pro football: Minnesota takes advantage of four interceptions and a fumble in 20-14 victory.
It took two months, eight consecutive losses and a trip deep into the brutal heart of winter, but the Rams Sunday at last found a foe as dispirited and listless as they have been this season.
It did not help. This is a Ram season destined for the Humiliation Hall of Fame, and even the drowsy Minnesota Vikings could not alter that inexorable force.
The Vikings (8-7), with their sliver of postseason hope vanishing even in victory, could not help but take advantage of the gusher of Ram blunders, ending up with a quiet 20-14 victory before 46,312 at the Metrodome.
Minnesota was eliminated when the Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys won Sunday, and the Vikings played like they already knew the dream was done.
But the Rams once again lacked offensive firepower, lacked the knack for creating turnovers on defense and lacked a quarterback able to avoid throwing the ball to his opponents.
By next Sunday evening, and perhaps sooner, they almost certainly will be lacking John Robinson, whose final days as coach are not exactly shaping up into a triumphant exit.
“I appreciated the quiet,” Robinson said of the funereal silence that greeted most of the day’s play.
Robinson did not appreciate the way the Rams’ first offensive possession ended--with safety Joey Browner’s interception of a Jim Everett pass in the Minnesota end zone, the first of four Everett interceptions.
And Robinson did not appreciate how the Rams’ last offensive possession ended--Everett losing a fumble on yet another snap-mishap between him and center Tom Newberry as the clock wound down and the Rams kicked away a chance to win the game.
“I really didn’t touch it--much,” Everett said. “Hate to end it on a play like that. But it’s happened before.”
The Rams have lost five center-snap fumbles, beginning with the first possession of the season and carrying to their last of Week 15.
In between, the Rams threw away a fourth-quarter chance to pull ahead when Everett, looking for Henry Ellard at the goal line, passed to Viking cornerback Reggie Rutland. Rutland hauled it in and went 97 yards for a Viking touchdown, putting them ahead by 20-7.
“The ball just hung up in the air a little,” Ellard said. “I was hoping he’d miss it or tip it up.
“Standing at one end and seeing him go all the way to the other end with the ball, that was something else. That’s kind of how our season has gone.”
The Ram defense actually held fairly tightly, giving up an average of 3.4 yards in 36 carries, getting a season-high three sacks and stopping Minnesota in the fourth quarter when the Ram offense was slowly stirring.
The offense put together a long drive in the final minutes for an Ellard touchdown reception to bring the Rams within 20-14, and the defense got the ball back with 1:46 to go.
But this season is too far gone for any of that to bring a Ram victory, and the lost snap was soon to follow.
The Ram losing streak is nine, equaling the franchise’s longest in a season, achieved in both 1937 and 1941. Including the beginning of 1938, the then-Cleveland Rams lost 12 in a row. “Not getting turnovers, giving away the long pass, not scoring from the 20-and-in and turning the ball over, those are the things that have killed us,” Robinson said.
Throughout the day, Everett, who has 18 interceptions, seemed to be unable to hook up with his receivers mentally or physically.
On the first, crucial interception, he and Aaron Cox failed to communicated on what route Cox was going to run, and Everett threw it nowhere near his open receiver. On the others, Everett simply missed.
After all of them, the Vikings were handed opportunities to pull ahead or dodge Ram attacks.
“I would say today I was probably as hesitant as I have been throwing the ball--for whatever reason,” Everett said.
“It’s just a confidence thing. I think each of the guys is beaten down--minus a percentage (of players)--because of the things that have gone on. I’d like to get a shot of confidence myself--I’ll take two. . . . But there’s something dragging us right now.”
For the Rams, the series of errors ruined what might have been the best team effort since early November. After last week’s 31-14 debacle against Atlanta, Robinson and several players noted a strong current of indifference on the team.
Sunday afternoon, several players were talking about this game--with the fourth-quarter mini-comeback fresh on their minds--as the beginning of a long walk back to respectability.
“Obviously, this is a loss where we didn’t give ourselves an opportunity to win,” right tackle Jackie Slater.
“But I think if you were a guy watching the game, you saw a different Ram team than the one last week as far as effort level.
“We have very few things we can accomplish this season, but one thing we can achieve is proving we are very good players and we can get better.”
Said linebacker Kevin Greene: “Today, we started to do some things.”
With the Rams nowadays, six-point losses are rays of sunshine.
Ram Notes
Injury Report: Tailback Robert Delpino bruised his left ankle, receiver Aaron Cox hurt his left shoulder, receiver Henry Ellard bruised his ribs and linebacker Larry Kelm suffered a left thigh bruise. . . . Ellard’s five catches for 72 yards and a touchdown lifted him over the 1,000-yard mark for a club-record fourth time.