RAM NOTEBOOK : Carter, Lester Blazing a Wide Trail for Bettis

They’re buried so low on the Rams’ season statistic sheets that you would need a shovel and a magnifying glass to find them.

Tight end Pat Carter has only 12 catches all season and dropped a touchdown pass in the end zone last Sunday at Cincinnati. Fullback Tim Lester has only 11 carries for 74 yards and hasn’t carried at all in eight games.

But ask tailback Jerome Bettis about the key to his four consecutive games of 100 or more yards rushing and he’s quick to mention Lester and Carter.

“Oh, my goodness,” Bettis said. “Tim and Pat are the unsung heroes of the offense. Everyone talks about the offensive line, but nobody ever talks about the lonely tight end and the lonely fullback. They don’t get the respect they deserve in terms of blocking. They’ve been doing a great job.”

“If I had a busload of Tim Lesters,” said Chick Harris, Ram running backs coach, “I know I’m going to win a lot more games than I’ll lose.

“Tim has been the front man for Jerome. You don’t have to wait to look on the tape to see good blocks. Every block he makes is a finished man on the play. It’s important and vital to the play that you get that first block. And Tim has thrown himself in there against some pretty darn good linebackers.”

Lester, a 10th-round pick from Eastern Kentucky in 1992, has been the lead blocker on Bettis’ carries up the middle, and has been one of the lead blockers along with Carter on sweep plays.

“Pat Carter is as good a blocking tight end as we’ve seen this year,” said Cleveland Coach Bill Belichick, whose team faces the Rams Sunday at Anaheim Stadium. “They make an awful lot of yards running behind Carter and Lester. From a team standpoint, the running game has been very productive with them.”

Bettis leads the NFL in rushing with 1,227 yards in 239 carries, an average of 5.1 yards per carry. He has gained 83 more yards than Buffalo’s Thurman Thomas, who has 67 more carries than Bettis.

According to the Rams, Bettis has run the sweep 32 times in the last four weeks, and his outside running, led by the blocking of Lester and Carter, has produced 305 yards and a touchdown.

“It’s a one-on-one challenge for me,” Lester said of blocking. “You have some of the best linebackers and safeties in the league coming up on you. I just enjoy going out and trying to punish those guys.”

Despite rushing only 11 times this season, Lester has averaged 6.7 yards a carry, the best among the full-time rushers. He has carried the ball only five times in the last three games for 33 yards.

But you won’t hear Lester whining about getting more carries, which is a relief to Harris.

“That’s good to have because you don’t have to worry about patting a guy who’s pouting because he’s not getting the ball,” Harris said.

Said Lester: “I’ve always been a blocking back anyway. In college I blocked a lot too. I enjoy it.”

If Bettis is named to the Pro Bowl next Tuesday, he gets to take someone with him to Honolulu for the Feb. 6 game. Who’s he going to take . . . Carter or Lester?

“I’ll take Tim,” Bettis said. “I only get one extra ticket so I can’t take them both. But I already promised Tim I would take him.”

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Weekends without Bernie: The dust has settled somewhat in Cleveland, where Belichick has been under fire for releasing popular quarterback Bernie Kosar, who has since signed with the Cowboys.

Fans picketed outside the stadium and wore Kosar masks in tribute to their hero. They booed Belichick mercilessly after he released the veteran quarterback on Nov. 8.

Belichick’s reason for cutting Kosar loose?

“It’s what we said at the time--we were heading in a different direction,” Belichick said. “Any time you make a decision, especially at quarterback, there will be some criticism. There’s no question that Bernie is a popular player in this area. But you have to do what you think is best for the team and move forward. And that’s what we did.

“As I said when we released Bernie, I have a lot of respect for him and everyone in the organization has a lot of respect for him and what he has done. We just needed to move in a different direction. That’s a tough one. There’s no way to get around it being tough to release a veteran player, especially a popular one.”

It was a risky move, too. Vinny Testaverde, the former Tampa Bay quarterback who signed as a free agent with the Browns, was out with a separated shoulder when Kosar was released. Todd Philcox completed only 48% of his passes with four touchdowns and seven interceptions while filling in for Testaverde, who returned three weeks ago.

After all that has happened to the Browns this season, is Belichick still confident that they are heading in the direction he wants them to take?

“I would like to see us get there a little quicker than the way we’ve been doing recently. No doubt about it. Nobody likes losing, and nobody hates it more than I do. We’re working through a tough period, and I’m confident that we’ll work through it.”

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After starting the season 5-2, Cleveland has lost six of its last seven games and hasn’t scored more than 20 points in that span.

“We got off to a good start and had a good record, but I’m not sure if that was totally indicative of where the team was,” Belichick said. “We got some breaks and some things went right for us there.

“Vinny got hurt, we made a change at quarterback and had a couple tough losses. We haven’t had a lot of breaks lately.”

Cleveland ranks last in the league in turnovers with a minus-15 in the takeaway-giveaway category. The Browns have turned the ball over 34 times this season, including 19 interceptions.

“We have to do a better job of taking care of the ball,” Belichick said. “We hit a stretch where we had quite a few turnovers against Seattle and Houston earlier. The biggest part of the problem is that we’re lowest in the league in the amount of turnovers we’ve created defensively (19). Our overall numbers as far as giving the ball away are only a little higher than last year.”

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Charity work: Coach Chuck Knox presented $20,000 in donations on behalf of the Rams to six Southern California charities--the First AME Church, Watts Willowbrook Boys Club, Salvation Army, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Anaheim, and The Times and Orange County Register charities. The money was raised throughout the season from player fines such as being late for meetings and being overweight.

Notes

According to team officials, Ram center Bern Brostek has missed only three plays in his last 30 games. . . . Knox is 7-2 against Cleveland (2-0 with the Rams, 1-1 with Buffalo and 4-1 with Seattle).