Phillips’ Absence Met With Cheers
The cheer had to be as loud as it ever gets for a three-yard gain on second-and-10 in the first quarter.
The roar went up after the public address announcer said “44, Jerald Moore, the ballcarrier.”
It wasn’t so much an appreciation for who ran the ball as much as it was gratification for who didn’t: Lawrence Phillips.
The St. Louis Rams’ fans made it clear they have had enough of Phillips, just as the team made it clear when it waived him Thursday after he walked out of a meeting with Coach Dick Vermeil, then skipped team meetings and practice Wednesday.
The Rams took a chance on him and lost. Now he’s not their problem anymore. His legacy is.
Despite all the talk from players and coaches about how Phillips only hurt himself, the bottom line is the Rams now have nothing to show for their 1996 top draft pick.
Phillips has nothing to show either. He won’t get the remaining $2.7 million on his three-year, $5.6 million contract. And he hasn’t proved that he can learn from his mistakes.
The list of infractions is getting too long. The most notable remains his no-contest plea to misdemeanor assault and trespassing in 1995 when he dragged his ex-girlfriend down a staircase while at Nebraska. He was charged with driving under the influence weeks after the Rams drafted him. He was charged with disorderly conduct at an Omaha hotel in February, then charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving with a revoked license after a traffic accident a few days later.
In April, he spent 23 days in jail for violating his probation in the assault case.
Ram Coach Dick Vermeil was there to greet him when he was released.
Vermeil did everything he could to accommodate Phillips, who missed a slew of meetings and worried management with alcohol-related incidents.
The overly emotional Vermeil invested so much in Phillips, and this is his reward.
“I feel worse for Lawrence Phillips,” Vermeil said after the Rams suffered their eighth straight loss, 16-10, to the Carolina Panthers. “It’s his loss. We lined up and played today, anyway. He didn’t line up and play.”
Vermeil isn’t the first coach to look foolish in his handling of Phillips. Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne set the standard when he allowed Phillips to rejoin the team following the assault.
Someday, perhaps before too long, some other coach will have to deal with Phillips. Sooner or later a running-deficient team will come calling on Phillips, trouble and all. Wasn’t that Bam Morris running for the Ravens Sunday? He probably has more arrest warrants than touchdowns this season.
But as Ram offensive lineman Zach Wiegert, a former teammate of Phillips at Nebraska, said, “You only get so many chances.”
Even when the Rams cut him, they said it was performance-related, as if a better yards-per-carry average would have made all of the transgressions tolerable.
Even if Phillips ran like Walter Payton he would have to confront the problems, the problems that are within himself.
Football isn’t the solution. Osborne said it was when he reinstated Phillips. He said Phillips needed the support and structure of the team, that he would be a better person if he was allowed to play the game he loved.
If Phillips really loved the game so much, he wouldn’t betray it by abusing his blessed stature as a professional athlete. If his teammates meant so much to him, he wouldn’t let them down the way he has.
“It’s self-inflicted,” said safety Toby Wright, another Nebraska product and a close friend of Phillips. “He knows that.”
Wright said Phillips had some resentment toward the Rams from the beginning because of the way contract negotiations went. Phillips should have realized he had no leverage; he was lucky to be drafted at all.
Then he chose not to play by the team’s rules.
“I try to talk to him, do whatever, but he’s a grown man,” Wright said. “He has to make his own decisions.
“I’m not here to condemn him. I’m very much supportive of him. There’s things that he does that he needs to learn about, about how this whole political realm works. . . . his problem was, was trusting people.”
A troubled childhood in Southern California left Phillips with a deep mistrust of people and it’s still causing problems.
“He’s not concerned with trying to let other people know Lawrence, the real Lawrence,” Wright said. “Sometimes it’ll work against him.”
He’s actually better off when he opens up. He avoided the media in the weeks following his dismissal from the Cornhuskers in 1995. When he finally did face the press during a mandatory session with the media before the Fiesta Bowl, he came across as a decent person. He said everything you wanted to hear him say, expressing remorse over the incident and admitting he needed help to control his anger.
He has tried to give back to the community in St. Louis, showing up unexpectedly at a home for troubled youth to play with the kids. He bought them tickets for Ram games.
He just hasn’t done enough for himself. Or the team.
The Rams decided Phillips could hurt them more than they could help him.
So there they were in the fourth quarter Sunday, down by six points, with two minutes and four downs to score from the three-yard line of the Panthers.
Two passes and two runs by Moore didn’t work. Four chances and the Rams came away with nothing but their eighth straight loss.
Would Phillips have made it into the end zone?
We’ll never know. He cost himself the opportunity. Maybe he cost his team the game.
The losses--for the Rams and for Phillips--keep piling up.