Talkin’ the Talk : Rams’ Jerome Bettis Is Also Walkin’ the Walk, Showing Opponents That His Actions Speak at Least as Loud as His Words
He’s a snorting, smiling, 240-pound road hog who likes to hear his victims grunt and groan as they crumble.
And then, as the opposition takes inventory of bumps and bruises, Ram running back Jerome Bettis delivers the really bad news.
“I’ll be back,” he says with a grin.
“Bettis was talking a lot of trash out there,” New Orleans linebacker Rickey Jackson said of last Sunday’s game in the Superdome. “He was having fun, like a kid in a candy store. He kept getting up and telling us he’d be back.
“I really think what happened is that we had guys trying to over-hit him because he was talking so much trash.”
Bettis also yells. What he yells is often unintelligible, but no matter, he simply keeps yelling.
“On occasion I’ll look up and see him shaking his head, looking at the defenders with this, like, crazed stare,” said Ram tackle Jackie Slater. “You got defenders seeing that and they’re just saying, ‘This big son of a gun is crazy.’ ”
Bettis has gone helmet to helmet with some of the game’s top linebackers and popped up screaming, “Is that all you got?”
When linebacker Sam Mills ripped the ball out of Bettis’ hands Sunday on the Rams’ first possession and returned it 30 yards for a touchdown, Bettis got irritated.
“Somebody was going to have to pay for that,” he said, and the record books now show that Bettis ran for more yards in the Superdome than any other player ever.
“There’s no stopping me,” Bettis told the Saints. “No, no, no.”
The 49ers couldn’t control him three weeks ago, when he gained 133 yards in 18 carries. He stung the Cardinals, who had been tremendously successful against the run, for 115 yards in 16 carries.
The Saints were gunning for the playoffs but were trampled by Bettis, who ran 28 times for 212 yards.
“Running for 212 yards is a feeling of dominance,” Bettis said. “I’m pounding at them. I’m pounding at them and there’s nothing easy about it, but it’s like, dang, whew, you can just hear it. It’s like you can hear it after every play, the sighs, ‘Oh, man,’ and that drives you even more to get that feeling of dominance.
“They get frustrated, and I like to think I get to them. You just want to dominate a defense and take their whole football team out of the game.”
Bettis said he could not keep track of the yards.
“They were coming so quick I couldn’t add that quickly,” he said, laughing. “You know what I am saying? It was like 70, 80, 100, they were piling up so quickly.”
On his 71-yard touchdown run, Bettis outran four defenders.
“That was the highlight of my year,” Bettis said. “It was long enough that people can no longer doubt that I have good speed. There have been a lot of people, especially with the media here, saying I didn’t really have the speed to get outside.
“Once they realized, ‘Hey, he can break a long one,’ that let them know I can be a complete tailback. I wasn’t just the bruising battering fullback-type of runner that everybody thought I was.”
After fullback Tim Lester and guard Leo Goeas had cleared a path, Bettis broke free from defensive lineman Les Miller and simply outran the Saints’ secondary.
“I saw the gang start to chase him, and I saw that they weren’t gaining on him,” Coach Chuck Knox said. “Then I said, ‘Just hang on.’ Now they have some people in their secondary that can run.
“I’ll tell you, it’s a lot more fun to see some of their guys tail-lighting one of mine than it is the other way around.”
Bettis will probably be given every opportunity to romp and stomp the Bengals at Cincinnati on Sunday. Cincinnati has the NFL’s third-worst defense at stopping the run.
“I’ll say this, the big guy, when he’s running up in there, boy, that’s a force to be reckoned with,” Knox said.
Said Bettis: “I always look at stats to stay up on everything and to keep the guys motivated. For a while, (the goal) was get to 1,000 (yards). I told the guys, ‘Get to a thousand, get to a thousand.’ Now I’m over a thousand, so we need to get another push. ‘Hey, let’s try to lead the league in rushing.’ ”
Detroit’s Barry Sanders is the NFL leader with 1,115 yards in 243 carries but is sidelined because of an injured knee. Bettis is No. 2 with 1,103 yards in 215 carries. Buffalo’s Thurman Thomas has 1,092 in 280 carries, and Dallas’ Emmitt Smith has 1,074 in 210.
“You see a guy like this run with the excitement he shows and it’s contagious,” Slater said of Bettis. “It’s been amazing to me over my career how much a great runner can energize people around him.
“I was on the field the first time he gained 100 yards, which was the first time he played the Saints, and I remember how excited he was in the huddle. I mean the guy’s tenacious, and it just ignites everybody.”
Slater cleared the way for Eric Dickerson, the last Ram rookie to go over the 1,000-yard mark. Dickerson ran for more than 100 yards 41 times with the Rams, including nine times his rookie season. Bettis has done it five times this year.
“They are different style backs with different physical makeups, but there’s something about that special runner when he’s on a roll,” Slater said. “You can see it with both of these guys. They have a way of coming back into the huddle and letting everybody know, ‘I came to play football today.’
“It gives you an awful lot of incentive to continue playing as we are when a guy like this has a chance for the rushing title. If he gets it, it belongs to everybody on that field. I mean you have to build on something, and this is someone special.”
Bettis’ former Notre Dame teammate, Rick Mirer, who has been the Seattle Seahawks’ starting quarterback this season, appears to be Bettis’ top competition for rookie of the year.
“I don’t know if they ever just give it to one guy or what,” Bettis said. “It’s my first year being a rookie, so I have no idea how things like that work.”
It’s also his last year as a rookie, and if he stays injury-free, all sorts of honors await him.
“It’s a great feeling to come in here and make an immediate impact,” Bettis said. “That was my goal.
“It would be a great honor to be the rushing champion and the rookie of the year. I think all the success I’m having individually is going to help the team. Going into next year, we have something to feed off, something to be proud of: We can run the football.”
An early-season rib injury, which aggravated his continuing problems with an asthma condition, prevented Bettis from rolling up even more impressive statistics. An asthma attack also forced him to miss the second quarter against the Saints.
“I had gotten hit in the stomach and then ran 71 yards and I was in a million pieces,” Bettis said. “I needed a break.”
Bettis began taking medication recently for his asthma, and that should allow him to relentlessly pound the opposition without pausing for more oxygen.
“There’s a lot of pain involved in what I do,” Bettis said. “Football is a violent sport and the position I play is probably one of the most violent positions you can play.
“I’m taking a lot of punishment, but the way to beat that is by giving the punishment. You know when you’re giving it, it’s never as rough as when you’re taking it. . . . I had to come in and set in the whirlpool and use some icebags this week, but I have a feeling the guys I was playing against this past week had to use a couple more than I did.”