Slow-Starting Rams Pushed Into Fast Lane
Lacking top-of-the-line accessories, the Rams are a plain, no-frills .500 football team as they head into a stretch of games that promises to be unkind to plain, no-frills teams.
The Rams have won two games at home, lost two on the road. They have edged two winless teams and lost resoundingly to two undefeated ones.
In their two victories, the Rams have yielded two turnovers and created eight. In their two losses, they have given up eight and created three.
It has been basic Chuck Knox football. Low-talent, high-effort, steal-a-few-victories football.
How far can this 3-13 team of a year ago travel in 1992?
Without any real offensive spark and with continued problems on defense, it has gotten the Rams at least this far--one game out of first place in the NFC West with 12 to play.
For now, that’s enough.
“Effort, if you don’t make a lot of mistakes and turn the ball over a lot, is going to give you an opportunity to be competitive--if you can bring that with you every week,” Knox said Monday.
“And obviously, if the other team brings effort and they’ve got better personnel and they don’t make mistakes, you’re going to have some problems. But we are getting, and have been getting, effort.”
After opening their season against four AFC East teams, the Rams must travel to San Francisco, New Orleans and Atlanta and play at home against the New York Giants.
In their two road games, against Buffalo and the Dolphins, the Rams have been outscored, 66-17.
Sunday, they will play the 49ers, who have outscored opponents, 75-30, in first-half play. The Rams have been outscored during the first half, 54-12.
The Rams continued their first-half blues Sunday, yielding 10 quick points to the Jets and scoring only five themselves, and got back in the game only when the Jets let them.
The Rams say their early struggles are just a sign of a team that is young defensively, a little out of sync offensively.
They argue that their late-game success against New England, Miami and the Jets shows what they are capable of doing.
“The first half, it was kind of tangled up,” running back Cleveland Gary said of Sunday’s game. “It’s like you’ve got all these ingredients, but they’re just not clicking together.
“It was a little frustrating at first, but with patience and time. . . . It was just a matter of time before we were putting points on the board.”
Even in their two victories, though, the Ram offense has looked off-kilter and only occasionally has shown the explosiveness it had several years ago.
The Rams have scored 49 points, almost all of them resulting from turnovers forced by their defense. The offense hasn’t scored 20 or more points in a game since November of last season.
Including Sunday’s two-for-11 performance, the Rams’ offense has converted only 26.7% of its third-down attempts, a sure sign that long drives have been few and far between.
But Knox pointed to Sunday’s six-play, 78-yard drive, concluded by a 31-yard touchdown pass to Flipper Anderson, as evidence that things are beginning to happen.
“I think there were a lot of positive things in yesterday’s game where the offense was concerned,” Knox said.
“I know we’re improving, getting better. . . . I didn’t know really how far we had to go. I knew it was going to be a big challenge, because we’ve got to rebuild it.
“We’re preparing and practicing better and we’re playing better. We’re still making mistakes, but we’re playing better. And we’re playing hard.”
Sunday, the Rams ran 23 times--quarterback Jim Everett also scrambled four times after dropping back to pass--and threw 25 passes. They moved the ball most effectively when Gary was running well.
“That’s what we want to have in a Chuck Knox scheme,” Everett said. “We’re still not taking care of the ball as well as we’d like. . . . but we’ll take 2-2 right now.”
