First Division Title Since ’85 Is Poetry in Emotion

Dick Vermeil gave bear hugs by the dozens. Georgia Frontiere wrote a special poem. Kurt Warner tried on his commemorative T-shirt and found it to be a perfect fit.

The St. Louis Rams capped their unlikely rise from NFC West doormats to division champions with a 34-21 victory over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. It was the Rams’ first division championship since 1985, when the team was in Anaheim.

“I came here thinking we could get it done,” said an emotional Vermeil, hired as Ram coach in 1997 after a 14-year coaching hiatus.

Frontiere, the team owner who took a chance on Vermeil, went to the locker room after the game to give him a poem she wrote especially for the occasion.

Off in a corner of the locker room, Warner, the Arena Football League refugee, soaked in the celebration scene, holding his NFC West champions baseball cap and T-shirt as he tried to gather his thoughts.

With four regular-season games left, Warner has 32 touchdown passes, one more than Jim Everett’s former team record of 31 in 1988.

“The records are nice,” he said, “but we want something that can never be taken away from us. We want that little [Super Bowl] ring.”

Warner threw for 351 yards and three touchdowns Sunday, including two to Az-Zahir Hakim.

“We felt we were good enough to do this,” Warner said. “There were no questions in our minds. Now we’ve gone out and shown everybody.”

St. Louis, which has a 10-2 record for the first time since 1978, hasn’t been to the playoffs since 1989. The Rams were 4-12 last season--last in the division.

After winning their first six division games by an average of 25 points, the Rams wrapped up the crown by weathering a Panther rally.

The Ram defense had shut out its last three opponents in the second half, but Carolina scored 14 points to make it close before Dre’ Bly’s 56-yard interception return for a touchdown put St. Louis up by 10 with 9:48 left.

“You just felt the air going out of your sails,” Carolina tight end Wesley Walls said. “You feel bad. You’re embarrassed. You lose the game and they clinch the division at your home field.”

Carolina (5-7) hurt itself with penalties, breakdowns in the secondary and missed tackles. The Panthers intercepted Warner passes twice but failed to convert either interception into points.

Carolina’s Steve Beuerlein threw two second-half touchdown passes--hooking up with Donald Hayes on a 36-yard scoring play in the third quarter and Patrick Jeffers on a 71-yard play with 14:31 left in the game, making it 24-21.

But Beuerlein had three passes intercepted. The last was an underthrown pass to Muhsin Muhammad that went directly to Bly, who ran untouched down the sideline for the touchdown that sealed it.

Beuerlein was 21 for 43 for 266 yards and three touchdowns.

The Rams converted their first two drives into touchdowns, with Warner completing seven of eight passes for 165 yards and a pair of scores.

The Panthers didn’t help themselves by repeatedly allowing St. Louis receivers to get wide open in the secondary and missing two tackles on the Rams’ second score, a five-yard “out” pattern that Hakim turned into a 48-yard touchdown.

The Rams caught the Panthers in an all-out blitz for their third touchdown, a 49-yard play in the second quarter that started when Warner dumped off a short pass in the flat to Hakim, who raced untouched to the end zone.