Believing Can Be Deceiving
The Rams are definitely, absolutely, without a doubt or equivocation moving to Baltimore next year.
Unless they have a change of heart.
The Rams are positively, categorically, undeniably, cross-their-hearts-and-hope-to-die going to wear blue helmets with yellow horns on them this year.
Unless they have a change of heart.
Bet the house. Bet the farm. Bet your best friend. Bet your life, because it’s as good as done: This fall, the Rams are going to play 16 regular-season games, because the Rams have given us their word.
Unless, at the very last moment, they get itchy and decide to trade down to 14.
The Rams, as you might remember reading in your newspaper Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, were going to use their No. 1 draft choice--the fifth pick overall--on a quarterback, if either Trent Dilfer or Heath Shuler were available.
If not Dilfer, then Shuler.
If not Shuler, then Dilfer.
One, or the other.
The Rams had to do this, they assured us, because Shuler and Dilfer were potential “franchise quarterbacks” and you get to draft one of those maybe once every 10 years; because Chris Miller is the Rams’ incumbent starting quarterback until he blows out a knee/shoulder/ankle/elbow/body part of your choice; and because, in the event of a blown Miller body part, the only thing separating the Rams from two or three months of T.J. Rubley is . . . Jamie Martin?
Well, let it be said that on the afternoon of April 24, 1994, a day that is certain to live in infamy for Ram fans on one coast or the other, the Rams had their chance. At No. 5, somewhat surprisingly, Dilfer was there. Shuler was gone, snatched predictably by Washington at No. 3, but Dilfer had slipped through--landing right in the Rams’ laps, a gift from the football gods and the Indianapolis Colts, who passed on Dilfer because they believe Jim Harbaugh is their quarterback of the future, apparently having seen no game films of Jim Harbaugh in the past.
The Rams said thank you very much, rolled up their sleeves, licked their lips . . . and drafted Wayne Gandy.
The Wayne Gandy.
The best left tackle on the board, the Rams said.
“A great value,” Chuck Knox said.
“Has quick feet and can bend his knees,” Pro Football Weekly said.
Some day, perhaps, we can tell our grandchildren about the time when the Rams could have drafted Trent Dilfer, the great All-Pro quarterback of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, and went instead with a big guy who could bend his knees.
How Gandy came to the Rams, or rather, how the Rams came to Gandy, wasn’t easy. It required the Rams to trade down not once but twice--from fifth to seventh and then from seventh to 15th.
Rather than grab Dilfer, as they guaranteed they would, the Rams ran away from him. Couldn’t get far enough away from him.
“We had a change of heart,” Knox explained.
“The quarterback we had highest rated on the board was already gone.” That would be Shuler, although most scouts had the two rated a virtual dead-heat and, pre-draft, the Rams claimed that Shuler and Dilfer ranked among their top three players overall.
“So,” Knox reasoned, “we had to back out of that hole and drop down.”
Tampa Bay, drafting two slots later, took Dilfer and the Buccaneer war room was instantly transformed into a disco, filled with happy, dancing coaches and scouts.
Knox looks at the same opportunity and likens it to a hole the Rams had to dig themselves out from.
Was it merely a ruse from the start? Trent Dilfer, smoke screen passer. Send him mash notes in the press, spread the word that you can’t live without him, bait the hook and wait for some quarterback-hungry sap to bite, lugging many additional draft choices with them.
Or maybe the Rams were confused. At Rams Park on draft day, this is always a possibility. Knox admitted to having been thrown for a loop by the Dallas Cowboys, who were offering wide receiver Alvin Harper for the fifth pick until New England chose the player Dallas coveted, USC defensive end Willie McGinest, with the fourth.
Harper would have been a way of salvaging this draft, wide receiver being the Rams’ gravest need this side of a good moving company, but once Harper was gone, Dilfer remained. He would have piled the Rams’ stack of blue chips that much higher--Sean Gilbert, Jerome Bettis, Dilfer.
That is called a young nucleus, and as far as young nuclei go, the Rams could have had one that ranked as high as anyone in pro football, save maybe Dallas.
But if appearances mean anything, Knox never intended to draft Dilfer, this Sunday or any Sunday.
According to Ram general manager John Shaw, Knox “felt that if we took a quarterback, after just signing Chris Miller, he’d be playing behind Chris Miller for a year. He felt we (instead) had to address the immediate needs of the team.”
And what of the fans, who soon will be hit with a season-ticket campaign asking them to pledge their allegiance to a very probable lame-duck franchise that has decided, in 1994, to build around an offensive tackle from Auburn?
“I think our fans would be more disappointed if we drafted a quarterback and didn’t play him,” Shaw said. “We’d be putting him on the bench, the fifth pick in the draft.”
These are the Rams talking, remember.
Believe them at your own risk.