Rams, Jaguars Teams to Beat

Based on the way they’ve played in early 2000, it seems likely that in a 30-7 game, the St. Louis Rams will beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers today, after the Jacksonville Jaguars hold off the Tennessee Titans, 17-7.

There’s no way that the plodding, old-fashioned Titans can make it three in a row over Jacksonville with the kind of football they showed last week at Indianapolis, where they outlasted the plodding Colts, 19-16.

Earlier that day, as St. Louis passer Kurt Warner threw for five touchdowns, the fast-striking Rams seemed to have arrived from another universe.

Spectacularly different from any other football team, they rolled to an improbable 49-17 lead over Minnesota on their way to a 49-37 decision.

This is by far the best team the Rams have had in their 60-plus NFL years.

And if their offensive coach, Mike Martz, stays on as expected, quarterback Warner has a chance to become the NFL’s best of all time.

*

He ignores the defense: Against Minnesota, in a new kind of exploding offense designed by Martz and run by Warner, Ram receivers burst into the open on every play like flowers opening up in a symmetrical garden.

And in the second half’s first 35 minutes, the Rams scored 35 points.

As a passer, Warner, unflappable, rarely took what the defense gave him.

He simply ignored the defense.

He isn’t a scrambler--he doesn’t make something good out of something bad the way Joe Montana did or Brett Favre does--he just stands back and lets the ball flow out of him.

Nearly every one of Warner’s passes was quick, smooth, natural, a jewel.

*

Martz’s offense: It is Martz’s offense that differentiated the Rams from the rest of the league all season and from the Vikings last Sunday.

Trade offensive coordinators, Martz for Minnesota’s Ray Sherman, and the score is about the same, but the Vikings win.

For their players are comparable.

Minnesota receivers Randy Moss and Cris Carter, for example, are faster and more talented than those who were flying around for St. Louis.

The Vikings basically beat themselves with their absurdly simple ways.

They almost never lined up in what should be their base offense--an intimidating three-receiver formation with Carter and Jake Reed wide and Moss inside.

Instead, they sent Moss and Carter far left and right and asked them to outrun the defense.

Meanwhile, Reed, who is nearly as gifted as his more famous teammates, spent altogether too much time on the bench while the Vikings wasted time running.

The Rams, by contrast, won with a complex pass offense that distributed receivers all over the field.

Martz had ranked Minnesota’s defensive backs in ability and on each pass, Warner, who isn’t allowed to call audibles, was instructed to throw to the receiver nearest the worst defensive back out there.

He almost never missed.

*

Faulk is a fine fit: Quite possibly, there has never been an offense as aggressive as the Rams’.

Against Minnesota, the Rams ran only five plays in the first quarter, four passes and an end-around--each play different from all the others, and each launched from a different formation--after which they led, 14-3.

In the second half, after reaching the Minnesota one-yard line three times, the Rams scored on three kinds of plays: a plunge by running back Marshall Faulk and passes to, respectively, a converted lineman and a converted linebacker.

Faulk is a typical 1999-2000 Ram, a player who in other years had looked good but not great, who was therefore traded off by Indianapolis, who was identified by St. Louis Coach Dick Vermeil as a perfect fit for the Ram offense--and who is.

*

Today’s defenses better: Both the Rams and Jaguars will face tougher defensive teams than they defeated last week.

Some, in fact, would say that Tennessee has a defensive hex on the Jaguars.

The Jacksonville offense, however, can overpower any opponent if Coach Tom Coughlin aggressively mixes in quarterback Mark Brunell and running back Fred Taylor.

The whole story of that game is whether Coughlin will play it safe or boldly.

Safe gets him beat again.

The story of the Ram-Tampa Bay game is whether the Buccaneer defense is three times as good as Minnesota’s or merely twice as good.

One reason the Rams ran up 49 points on Minnesota is that there is only one great player in the Viking secondary, Jimmy Hitchcock.

Although Tampa Bay doesn’t understand modern offense, it has the defense to give the 1999-2000 Rams their first serious test.

*

Colts reverted: Something has changed in Indianapolis, where quarterback Peyton Manning and running back Edgerrin James played aggressive interactive offensive football all season to fool most of their opponents.

In recent weeks, unaccountably, the Colts have turned conservative while their coach, Jim Mora, up to his old tricks, played the old try-not-to-lose game.

Thus against Tennessee, it wasn’t until the Colts had to throw that they threw abundantly on early-down plays, and by then it was too late.

Mora’s old-time strategy, perfected at New Orleans, had beaten him again--by three points.

What made Mora think he could out-conservative the conservative Titans when Titan Coach Jeff Fisher has been such a successful conservative this season?

That was dumb football.

*

Fumbling offense: How often have you seen a sacked quarterback survive a third-down fumble because a teammate picked up the ball and ran for a first down?

To win a 14-13 game last week, Tampa Bay eliminated the Washington Redskins on such a run when Warrick Dunn, the fast little Buccaneer back, set up the winning touchdown on a weird play, which began when his quarterback, Shaun King, fumbled.

Usually, it’s a guy on the team that creates the sack-fumble who carries the football the other way, sometimes for a touchdown.

Sometimes, he just recovers it.

Once in a while, someone on the quarterback’s side recovers it, but this was the first time I ever saw a pro club lose a big game by sacking the other team’s quarterback and making him fumble.

Don’t tell me the Buccaneers don’t live under a lucky star.

*

One bad snap enough: How often have you seen a playoff team drive down the field and into position for a last-minute, game-winning field goal only to lose the three points--and the game--because a veteran center snapped the ball along the ground?

Sometimes, such a kick is blocked.

Sometimes, it’s missed.

On rare occasions, there is a bad snap.

But there was no reason for the Buccaneers to expect Washington to bless them with last-play, big-game snap trouble last week.

Don’t tell me they don’t live under a lucky star.

*

One penalty enough: How often have you seen a football team fall behind in the third quarter, 13-0, only to bail itself out and win the game when for the only time all day, a downfield judge called pass interference?

The Washington-Tampa Bay game was for the most part one in which the officials, as the maddening cliche has it, “let the boys play.”

That means they looked the other way when the boys fouled one another.

It’s an improper way to officiate, but that’s another story.

This time, along the sideline, a Tampa receiver and a Washington defensive back had contact, as they and their teammates had been doing with impunity throughout the game.

But this time, as the hometown crowd screamed, the foul was called.

This time, Tampa Bay walked 31 big yards to the Redskin 11-yard line.

And suddenly a team that had run to nowhere for three quarters was no longer out of the game, 13-0, but in it, 13-7, en route to a 14-13 finish.

Don’t tell me the Buccaneers don’t live under a lucky star.