Rams Show That Comebacks Are Thing of the Past : Pro football: A week after a 28-point rally against Tampa Bay, they fall behind early and lose to Saints, 37-14.
Eager for a sequel to one of their most scintillating efforts in years, the Rams on Sunday fell a little short.
Short of talent, short of patience, short of just about everything it takes to beat the New Orleans Saints, who took the Rams’ six turnovers and varied assortment of other errors and turned them into 37 consecutive points.
Two meaningless Ram touchdowns made the final score 37-14. After the Rams’ 28-point comeback victory over Tampa Bay the week before, that hardly pleased the Anaheim Stadium crowd of 47,355 or Coach Chuck Knox.
“I think the lesson is,” Knox said, “you cannot play Santa Claus and have a chance to win.
“You can’t turn the ball over and get the penalties we got and have a chance to win.”
Not against the Saints, who improved to 11-3.
The week before, the Rams spotted Tampa Bay a 27-3 halftime lead before winning, 31-27, after the biggest comeback victory in franchise history.
What were the Rams (5-9) thinking about at halftime Sunday, trailing the Saints, 23-0?
“Can we do it two weeks in a row?” wide receiver Jeff Chadwick said. “Sure. There was a chance we could do it.
“But let’s face it, the Saints aren’t Tampa Bay.”
Said Saint quarterback Bobby Hebert: “We are a pretty good team. Today, we got a big lead at halftime, and we just didn’t want the same thing to happen to us as we saw the Rams (do to) Tampa Bay.”
Sunday, Cleveland Gary’s fumble on the Rams’ first play from scrimmage set up the Saints’ first touchdown. Morten Andersen missed the extra-point try, his first miss in 121 attempts.
After the Saints fumbled away a punt return at their 17, an interception of a Jim Everett pass set up another Saint touchdown.
Some sloppy Ram pass coverage and tackling on the next New Orleans possession resulted in another Saint touchdown. It was 20-0, and the second quarter still had almost 4 1/2 minutes to go.
“This is the worst,” Ram safety Anthony Newman said. “We got beat up and down today. We really did--every which way.”
The Ram offense, which went into the game hoping to protect Everett against the Saints’ league-leading pass rush, kept the Saints sackless, but accomplished almost nothing else.
The Rams’ first-half output: 28 offensive plays, 101 yards, five turnovers, no hope.
Everett said the Rams were “totally humiliated.”
“Granted, they’re a fine, fine football team,” Everett said. “But we assisted them in a lot of ways.”
The Rams kept up the pace in the second half, when defensive end Gerald Robinson’s late hit on Hebert helped the Saints score again, this time on a one-yard plunge by tailback Vaughn Dunbar. Dunbar carried 13 times and gained 91 yards after starter Fred McAfee suffered a separated shoulder in the early going.
Having finally moved into Saint territory on the Rams’ next possession, Gary fumbled again--his third lost fumble in two games and his eighth fumble of what had, until recently, been his breakthrough season.
The Rams lost three fumbles and Everett threw three interceptions.
“You try not to think too much about it and go on,” Chadwick said. “But as it goes on, it gets to the third quarter, you look at the scoreboard and see who’s doing most of the damage. It wasn’t us.”
It was the Rams’ worst turnover day of the season, and, according to most Rams asked, their worst performance.
The Rams have lost 15 consecutive division games and six in a row to the Saints.
Said cornerback Todd Lyght: “We wanted to come out and finish the season strong. We come back to win in Tampa, which was great, shows that the team can come from behind.
“But what’s disappointing is to come out and have a letdown against New Orleans. Pretty much, they did whatever they wanted to do on the field today.”
The Saints went ahead, 37-0, on Craig Heyward’s nine-yard run after Gary’s fumble. New Orleans, which entered the game struggling with its rushing, got 161 yards against the NFL’s worst run defense.
Hebert was 15 of 25 for 238 yards and two touchdowns.
“Even though they aren’t a very good team against the rush, they played well,” said Heyward, who finished with 50 rushing yards and 36 yards in receptions.
“But we executed a lot better. We went out and established the run, which opened up everything else. Everything went according to plan.”
Said Everett: “When you keep stabbing yourself in the leg all the time, it’s hard to stop the bleeding.”
Ram Notes
Tailback Cleveland Gary’s 58 rushing yards leaves him 19 short of becoming the first Ram runner since 1989 to get 1,000 in a season. . . . The Rams had no sacks, their fourth sackless game of the season.