Angels’ Luck Sticks Around to Haunt Rams

In a touching tribute to the Angels on what should have been the final day of baseball’s regular season, the Rams showed Sunday that they, too, can blow a 5-0 lead at Anaheim Stadium.

It was a 2-0 ballgame after Sean Gilbert took Jeff George deep, pounding him in the second.

In the third, Tony Zendejas made it 5-0 with a towering drive to left field.

But Atlanta rallied for eight in the fourth, and that was that. A sterling defensive effort--just one error--had gone to waste, and the Rams walked away from this one as keepers of another sacrosanct Angel tradition.

Under .500 and in last place on the first Sunday of October.

The Rams simply can find no relief.

They shut out Joe Montana and Jeff George through seven consecutive quarters.

They limit the multidimensional offenses of Kansas City and Atlanta to single digits--a total of eight points in two weeks.

They come within 3 minutes 15 seconds of recording back-to-back shutouts, which would have been a nine-year first for the league and a 49-year first for the franchise.

And then a backup quarterback splits two Ram safeties with a third-down pass into the end zone and the Rams wind up with a split, one victory and one defeat, and how on earth does this end justify the means?

Five-nil. “That would have been a great score to win by,” said Ram cornerback Todd Lyght, who’d just played perhaps the game of his professional career, hounding and holding Andre Rison to three catches, 34 yards and no points.

“We played real good,” Lyght said, staring at the dressing room floor.

“(Expletive), man.

“I don’t even know, man.

“You know?”

Among Ram defenders, Lyght was speaking a universal language. What else can be said after you shut down Rison, knock George out of the game, make the two biggest names in the Atlanta run-and-shoot irrelevant . . . and a couple of understudies, Bobby Hebert to Ricky Sanders, beat you on one completion with barely three minutes on the clock?

“Maybe we need to score more points on defense,” Ram defensive end Fred Stokes suggested.

“Maybe we have to shut people out,” safety Anthony Newman said.

Beyond that, what more can a defense do?

Stokes delivered what might have been the NFL hit of the week, a brutal head-on assault of George late in the third quarter that left the Atlanta quarterback writhing on his back in his end zone, tiny falcons swirling around his head.

“He made this kind of . . . sound, “ Stokes said of George. “It was kind of scary. A loud grunt. I knew that if he was going to get up, he was going to get up slowly.”

George had to be helped off the field and into the trainer’s room, where he was diagnosed with a concussion. Job well done, Stokes thought. The Rams’ starting quarterback, Chris Chandler, went out earlier with a badly sprained ankle. A passer for a passer, Stokes figured, a tooth for a tooth.

“I thought that would even things up,” Stokes said. “Now, both starting quarterbacks were out. It seemed like a good thing, until Bobby came in there and started playing.”

It isn’t often a defensive lineman gets to spike a quarterback in the end zone, but the Rams had done it twice. First, Gilbert for a safety. Then, Stokes just as soon as George released the ball. “That was hitting it on the sweet spot, like a baseball player,” Stokes said, savoring the sensation. “That was a sweet sound.”

Yet, it totally backfired on the Rams.

Stokes hit George just hard enough to take the Rams out of the game. On came Hebert and there went the Falcons, driving downfield 89 yards for the only touchdown of the afternoon.

“You have to realize Bobby’s been in there before,” Stokes said. “Unlike Tommy Maddox, who was thrown into the fire for us. Which is kind of unfair, when you think about it. . . .

“You think ‘Our starter’s out, their starter’s out’ and things are even. They weren’t as even as we thought.”

One 13-yard pass from Hebert to Sanders was all it took. Earlier in the week, Newman went on record to challenge Rison to “come over the middle,” but it was Sanders who took him up on it.

It was in the middle of the end zone where Sanders caught the ball, between the two Ram safeties, Marquez Pope and Newman.

“(Sanders) was on the opposite end of the field,” said Newman as he issued a plea of not guilty. “I was on Rison. The man to stop down there is Rison. Stop him in the end zone.”

Again, mission accomplished.

Again, not good enough.

“We came this close,” Newman said, pinching the air with his right thumb and forefinger.

“Inches away. Inches away.”

And now?

“We’re nothing,” Newman said. “Let me tell you, I’m hurting so much right now. I was (ticked) off at the end of the game, but now I’m sad. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Whoever said ignorance is bliss obviously never played defense for the Rams.