Rams, Falcons Play Emotional Climactic Regular Season Game

Here it is folks: classic, big-time NFL football on the climactic week of the regular season, a matchup of teams so emotional that you can just feel the hunger in their voices.

“I don’t know whether it’s important or not,” said Rams Coach Knox when asked how badly he wants to end this season on a high note by defeating the Atlanta Falcons Sunday before a half-empty Anaheim Stadium.

“I mean, it’s important to win the football game. But what that one game is going to do with what you do next year, I don’t know.

“High notes, low notes, I can’t put my hand on those.”

Jerry Glanville, coach of the 6-9 Atlanta Falcons, was just as passionate about this matchup of the last-placed 5-10 Rams and his second- to-last-placed Falcons:

“We’ll try to win the football game,” Glanville said. “We’ll do all we can to try to win the football game.

“It won’t change where we end up, it won’t change much, but it’ll make everybody feel better.”

OK, Super Bowl XXVIII 1/2, this is not.

This isn’t even Nov. 1, when the Rams and Falcons were still both weeks from elimination and exchanged a game-full of body punches in the Falcons’ 30- 28 victory.

In the win, the Falcons probably lost their chance at making a playoff run: Starting quarterback Chris Miller, who had thrown 15 touchdowns in eight games, tore ligaments in his knee during the game and was lost for the season.

Losing Miller, coupled with the blight of injuries to the already-fragile Falcon defense, has put them where they are now: Playing the Rams on the final Sunday for nothing, with Wade Wilson at quarterback, after making the playoffs with a 10-6 record last season.

Could Glanville forsee this happening?

“If I did,” Glanville said, “I would’ve left, you know? We thought we’d be every bit as good as we were last year and hoping you get improvement, get even better. But the train sort of got derailed.”

Actually, there is a crown to be decided in this game. The Falcons are the worst statistical defense in football so far, yielding an average of 351.5 yards a game to opponent offenses. The Rams are the second-worst, giving up 338.6, and the 1992 crummy defense title is up for grabs.

The Rams have allowed the most rushing yards in football, 2,149. The Falcons have allowed the most passing yards, 3,356. The two teams combined have allowed 732 points this year.

This game might be irrelevant, but the numbers say it won’t be low-scoring.

This also is the Rams’ last chance in 1992 to get out from under their most embarrassing and telling losing streak: if they lose Sunday, the Rams will have lost 16 consecutive NFC West games, including five consecutively to the Falcons and six consecutively this season.

The Rams, of course, have played meaningless regular-season finales before, and this time, get to do it with their former coach, John Robinson, in attendance for the first time since he walked off the field after last year’s finale loss to Chuck Knox’s Seattle Seahawks.

Robinson is doing the color commentary for CBS’ broadcast of the game, which will be blacked out locally.

For Knox, this game is one last chance to show a little pride in a season that has only deepened his desire to improve the Rams’ talent level. For the Rams, six victories is a meaningful accomplishment after last season’s 3-13 swan dive.

Also, the Rams, after starting this season with some verve, are 1-4 in their last five games and, with a loss, would end their season with three consecutive losses, an unhealthy reminder of last year’s 10-game losing streak to end the year.

“We’re anxious to win, finish up on a winning note, get six wins under our belt,” Knox said. “So that will be the incentive.”

Said linebacker Kevin Greene: “It’d be nice to double our record from last year. Plus we haven’t won a divisional game in quite some time, a couple years. So definitely we need to win this one. We can’t pack it in by any means.”

The Falcons, after the disastrous first 15 weeks of this season, sound as if they just want to get through this week and get 1992 over with as fast as possible.

Think Deion Sanders, Andre Rison and the rest of this wild bunch love preparing for a meaningless game?

Sanders highlighted last Monday night’s 41-17 humiliation by the Dallas Cowboys when he overturned a bench on the sideline.

“I think the reason he turned it over because it was too far for some of us to reach, or we’d all turned it over,” Glanville said. “We hate to give away the game, and Deion was frustrated he fumbled the kickoff return.

“This will be a challenge this week. but most of the time our kids come and they play hard and they try hard, that’s all we can ask of them.

“I tell everybody I don’t have any right to complain about the injuries, because (if) you’re in the league long enough. . . . We’ve had a lot of success and we’re usually in the playoffs. We’re probably going to thrill the league that we’re not there . . .

“But I don’t have any right to complain because we’ve been so fortunate in previous years. And this is one of those years.”

Ram Notes

In the increasingly open tailback situation, Coach Chuck Knox said he plans to start Cleveland Gary despite Gary’s recent fumbling problems and fullback David Lang’s emergence as a big-play threat from tailback. But Knox said Lang and backup Anthony Thompson should get playing time at tailback, also. . . . Knox said he plans no other major lineup changes for the game.