It Comes to Pass: Rams Are Fun to Watch

Going back 100 years or more, there has never been a football team as interesting to watch as the Super Bowl-champion St. Louis Rams.

That, for one thing, is because no other NFL head coach has ever had St. Louis Coach Mike Martz’s grasp of pass offense.

Nor has the NFL in its first century turned up many players as gifted as Ram passer Kurt Warner and the speed he throws to: Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, Az-Zahir Hakim, Torry Holt and Ricky Proehl.

On the St. Louis team these days, it all begins with Martz, who, however, hasn’t done it yet as a defensive leader.

Thus the Ram defense adds impressively to the entertainment power of this team by giving up nearly as many points as Warner earns.

After winning their first two by scores of 41-36 and 37-34 from Denver and Seattle, the Rams will have a day off at home today against the San Francisco 49ers. Or will they?

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BETTER READERS: If the wins are coming harder for the Rams this season than last, one explanation is that their opponents are starting to read their formations, particularly the short-pass Ram sets.

Two of Warner’s short passes have been returned for touchdowns so far, one by Denver, one by Seattle.

A year ago, the Rams’ many formations confused their opponents as much and as often as their great speed, but it’s only normal that the league would eventually catch up to a design thing.

Though Warner still looks as if he is going to take the Rams to a touchdown every time he has the ball, the interceptions are mounting, too, four this month.

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TWO STYLES: The heart-stopping Seattle game tested the Seahawks’ West Coast offensive team against the Rams’ big-pass team and, in the end, there wasn’t much to choose between the NFL’s two most important offensive styles.

The Seahawks, coached by the game’s leading active West Coast Offense thinker, Mike Holmgren, had these advantages:

o They could work time off the clock at advantageous moments because the West Coast is a ball-control offense that mixes a lot of short passes with unexpected runs, depending mostly on what defense they see.

o Thus, they could run on third and 10, or even second and 20, with a reasonable expectation of making a first down.

Still, great passing teams will beat down a West Coast adversary--even on the road--for these reasons:

* Because they score so often, they put increasing pressure on the West Coast to have to keep coming back.

* They can go farther faster than any ball-control team, which gives them the edge at game’s end if they have to come back to win--as the Rams have had to do twice already in two appearances.

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HEAD HUNTER: The Broncos will have to protect their quarterback--BETWEEN plays--to win at Oakland today in the NFL Game of the Week.

If they can’t keep Raider head-hunter Regan Upshaw from going for a late hit on Brian Griese, they could lose their quarterback for the season.

Twice in the last two weeks, Upshaw, a defensive end from Cal, has illegally assaulted famous Raider opponents, first Ryan Leaf, the San Diego quarterback, and then Peyton Manning, who quarterbacked Indianapolis into a 21-0 lead before Oakland overhauled him last Sunday to surprise the Colts, 38- 31.

The NFL fined Upshaw $7,500 for smashing Leaf in the head, but that didn’t stop him from going for Manning’s knees after a first-half play was over.

That overtly unsportsmanlike conduct led to a 15-yard penalty.

Otherwise this season, Oakland and Denver are both playing like championship teams--despite the carnage in Denver, where the Broncos have already lost too many of their stars to injury.

One more such casualty could finish them off.

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LUCK COUNTS: As the Colts will tell you this week if you ask, luck plays a larger role in the winning and losing of close NFL games than it sometimes seems.

Even though the Raiders earned and deserve their upset decision last week, the score might well have been 38-38 instead of 38-31 in the last minute but for three unusual developments:.

o First, the Raider line, breathless after rushing Manning uninterruptedly during his no-huddle rally, got a gift two-minute rest period while the game was stopped for instant replay.

o Then on first down at the Raider 19-yard line, the Colts, whose offense had been performing as errorlessly as Oakland’s, suddenly drew a five-yard false-start penalty.

o On the next play, they drew a 10-yard holding penalty.

And now, instead of first and 10 at the Raider 19 with time running out, it was first and 25 at the Raider 34-yard line, too much for even Manning.

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BUC LUCK: On the same day, luck also helped elevate the Tampa Bay Buccaneers into a matchup of 2-0 teams at Detroit today in the other conference’s Game of the Week.

The Buccaneers were still in a scoreless fight with the Chicago Bears in the second quarter when a well-thrown pass by Bear quarterback Cade McNown was deflected at the line of scrimmage by a player who had been blocked out.

The player was defensive tackle Warren Sapp, who styles himself the leader of the Baccaneers, but who couldn’t get near McNown at that pivotal moment.

Frustrated, he raised his hand at the line of scrimmage to deflect a pass into an interception, enabling the Buccaneers to score at last, 3-0.

Whether, on their own, they ever could have broken through a pretty good Chicago defense with their usual conservative offense is unclear because Tampa Bay’s Tony Dungy has for years been the NFL’s most conservative coach.

The announcers incorrectly faulted McNown for a bad pass even as Sapp’s misplay was opening the gates to a Tampa flood, 41-0.

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DUNGY FIRES: At Tampa, Dungy, to dominate the NFC Central since Green Bay’s collapse, has built the best defensive team in football.

You can appreciate what happened to Chicago’s young quarterback McNown against Dungy’s team only by fully understanding that in a league with a lot of defense-minded coaches, the coach of the Buccaneers is the NFL’s foremost defensive philosopher.

But until this game, he had never shown that he had a clue offensively.

What happened this time is that after his defense got him a 20-0 lead at the half, Dungy was persuaded to unleash his young quarterback, Shaun King.

With suddenly aggressive play-calling, the Buccaneers allowed King to throw the ball on most first-down plays in the second half, a strategy that brought their great receivers, Keyshawn Johnson and Jacquez Green, into the game.

That predictably made some big holes for Warrick Dunn and Mike Alstott, who form the NFL’s only two-running-backs backfield.

And in a wink, the Buccaneers had become a fine all-around team, which, considering their defense, is really bad news for the rest of the NFC.