Rams Try to Resurface in Tampa
A principal question of Monday night’s Game of the Week is whether the St. Louis Rams, now that they’re back in championship form, can improve on their most recent performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who, in the 1999 playoffs, held them to a score that was both low and strange, 11-6.
Coach Tony Dungy’s Tampa Bay defense is the only one that has really handled the Ram offense in the two years since Coach Mike Martz built it into the most explosive in the history of football.
It was in September, 1999, that Martz’s people began a high-scoring run that has yet to be interrupted except by Ram injury and Dungy’s defense.
On a field of grass, which always slows down their offense, the Rams will learn their fate in Tampa--wild card or division champion--for if they can win there, they can win their final game a week later in New Orleans.
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MOST VALUABLE: Any doubts about the identity of the NFL’s Most Valuable Player again this season were erased last Sunday when, against Minnesota, Ram quarterback Kurt Warner played with the skill and assurance he invariably shows except when crippled by a broken finger.
Although the design of the unique Ram offense is Martz’s, it was Warner who as usual made it go once more, 40-29.
His flashy passes opened a quick 17-0 lead, then created three more fast touchdowns in the second half.
The Rams had gone into that game 8-5 after losing three in a row, prompting opponents to suggest that the defending Super Bowl champion was at last falling apart.
They were wrong about that.
The bad streak had two causes and only two: injuries to the Rams’ two best players, Warner and running back Marshall Faulk.
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FAULK AGAIN: For the first time since Warner was injured, Faulk had a big day last week with 178 yards against Minnesota, 135 on runs, 43 on catches and runs.
The NFL’s most unusual and effective running back, Faulk had returned from shoulder injury last month, but despite the talents that make him what he is, he hadn’t exploded until Warner came back.
He needs Warner to excel.
That’s recurrently obvious in Ram games:
* On pass plays, although Warner uniquely hits most receivers in stride, it is Faulk who makes the most of that, capitalizing because he is a gifted running back.
* On ground plays, Faulk capitalizes on the reality that every Ram opponent must worry first about Warner, most noticeably on deep passes--which is a fact that leads Faulk into a lot of open space to run through.
During Faulk’s wondrous Ram career as runner-receiver, what sports fans have learned about him is, first, that he can’t carry an ordinary team but, second, that he can make a great offense greater.
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TALENT vs. AGGRESSION: Two aspects of Monday night’s game place it among the most intriguing of the season:
First, Tampa Bay has a talent advantage over St. Louis, particularly when both teams line up relatively injury-free.
Second, Martz and Warner tend to negate that advantage by playing more aggressively on offense than their opponents wish to.
Where Tampa looks for first downs, the Rams want touchdowns.
One other remarkable thing about the Rams--one that differentiates them from most former NFL champions--is that when unbothered by injuries, they’ve played better football this year than last, even though, all season, they have been a marked team.
The truism that opponents always play hardest against champions has held up this fall but hasn’t interfered much when Warner and Faulk have been free of injuries.
Their problem this time is that they’ll be up against the best tackling team the NFL has ever had, perhaps, which will be troubling in the red zone, where the Ram offense usually slow down anyway.
It’s pretty much true that the free-wheeling Rams can only be restrained when they line up inside an opponent’s 20-yard line, where the end line, less than 30 yards away, minimizes the edge that makes them what they are: their great long-pass speed.
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THE BUILDERS: As sports fans will note again today during the regular season’s next-to-last schedule of games, there are two ways to build a winning team these days:
You can load up on offense--as the Rams and Minnesota do--or you can concentrate on defense the way Tampa Bay and Miami do.
Because of free agency and the salary cap, it has become difficult for modern NFL recruiters to develop teams that are well rounded both offensively and defensively.
Thus if a winning club can be produced by either offensive or defensive means now--but not both--it follows that coaches focusing on offense are more helpful to NFL spectators than defense-minded people.
There were two great examples of that last Sunday when, in the first game of a televised doubleheader, Tampa Bay won a dull one from Miami, 16-13, before, in the lively nightcap, the Rams outscored Minnesota, 40-29.
In former years, conservative coaches repeatedly messaged sports fans with the cliche that offense sells tickets but defense wins.
That’s no longer true.
Imaginative coaches like Minnesota’s Dennis Green, who invested in, among others, the great receiver, Randy Moss, and the 250-pound passer-runner, Daunte Culpepper, have been more successful than most conservatives.
And more entertaining.
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GRASS PROBLEM: As a follow-up to the usual bundle of national criticism this year for indoor stadiums and artificial fields, a Florida rainstorm last week made a case against outdoor fields.
The skies opened a couple of hours before the Tampa Bay game at Miami, drenching early birds, and by the fourth quarter the teams were playing in a driving rain.
As it happened, that only strengthened the natural tendency of the coaches, Tampa Bay’s Dungy and Miami’s Dave Wannstedt, to play ball control and defense.
But if the game had involved better passing teams, it could have been ruinous as a contest.
In football, rain is an equalizer that makes luck dominant, as it was Sunday when, for example, Miami quarterback Jay Fiedler was throwing the ball.
That was infrequently when the game was on the line but often enough to pile up Fiedler interceptions until there were four.
On the eve of the January playoff games, some of which will be played in rain or snow, here’s a warning: A bad-weather winner tends to be not the better team but the better bad-weather team.
And on that level, football as an art form--as a game--suffers.
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BRONCO MAGIC: The Denver Broncos are on a six-game winning streak and still playoff-bound despite the worst personnel problems possible:
Injuries have taken away their quarterback, Brian Griese, and both of their exceptional running backs, Terrell Davis and Orlandis Gary.
The continuance of the Broncos as a contender in these circumstances says something about their coach, Mike Shanahan--who is typically judged first in the league except in the Colorado media community.
It also says something about their backup passer, Gus Frerotte, and their third-string running back, rookie Mike Anderson, who ran for another 100-plus yards Sunday.
How does Shanahan keep coming up with this kind of talent?
In Anderson’s case, there’s a three-part explanation:
To begin with, as an evaluator of talent, Shanahan is right there with whoever is considered first in the league.
Next, Denver ballcarriers have been smartly coached over the years by running-backs coach Bobby Turner and offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak.
And finally, Shanahan has the best offensive line coach in the league, Alex Gibbs, who, doubling as assistant head coach, has developed the blockers who have continually made life easier for Davis, Gary and now Anderson.
Gibbs is like Ram defensive coach Bud Carson in one respect: He wants to retire.
At least for now, Martz has chased that thought out of Carson’s head.
The question in Denver is whether Shanahan, debating with Gibbs, will be similarly successful.
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NEW LOOK: One more thing about the recent Minnesota-St. Louis game:
Carson, who returned as the Ram play-caller only two Sundays ago, is the defensive coach who in one fell swoop made everything easier for Ram quarterback Warner and harder on Viking quarterback Culpepper.
On play after play in the first half, Carson placed the Rams in position to provide a different look for Culpepper, the virtual rookie passer who, with Carson as his instructor, doubtless learned more that day than he has in any single prior game this season.
The Rams started by startling the Viking quarterback with a first-down nickel-defense alignment that was just the beginning of their surprises--as Culpepper doubtless noted again in the tapes.
Truthfully, the Vikings are better on offense than they seemed that day, when Culpepper earned three of his four touchdowns in the second half but couldn’t surmount his slow start.
For two reasons in particular the Vikings are better than they showed:
* Moss and Cris Carter are nonesuch wide receivers who should be thrown to even when it looks as if they’ll be double-covered, as they often are.
* Viking running back Robert Smith is probably the smartest ballcarrier in the league.
Smith is a Rolls-Royce type, elegant, tough, and so well put together that in heavy traffic he’s never on the receiving end of more than a glancing blow.
Next time, moreover, Culpepper will be more experienced when he sees Carson’s people in the playoffs, probably in Minneapolis, where the Vikings will enjoy the advantage of an extraordinarily noisy crowd--often the league’s loudest.
It figures that with Warner at quarterback and Martz calling the plays, the Rams, who with all their speed prefer an indoor track even if it’s Minnesota, have the offense to keep up.
But once again, if there is a Ram-Viking playoff, it will come down to Culpepper vs. Carson.