Rams Show They Are Team to Beat

Fourth and one at the San Francisco 10. St. Louis quarterback Kurt Warner hunkered down behind his center, twisted his face into a scowl, stood up and ripped off his chinstrap in mock disgust as he stomped toward the Ram sideline. He did everything but signal a timeout.

Suddenly, as the 49er defense relaxed, running back Marshall Faulk got the snap and gained four yards for a first down. The Rams scored on the next play.

Gimmicky? Sure. Arrogant? By all means. But just try to find someone in the St. Louis locker room who cares. The Rams won again Sunday--sweeping the 49ers with a 27-14 victory--and did so with offensive ingenuity, a stifling defense and just a bit of trademark trickery.

Although only one game separates the Rams (10-2) and 49ers (9-3), the home team left no doubt who owns the NFC West. The Rams, who lost to the 49ers 17 consecutive times from 1988 through ‘98, now have beaten them six times in a row. The Rams have the best record in the NFC and are in position to claim home-field advantage for the playoffs.

“We feel we have a good team, and right now they’re a great team,” 49er quarterback Jeff Garcia said. “We’re not up to their level right now. We realize that.”

Someone should have let Lance Schulters in on that secret. The 49er safety spent last week crowing about the “soft” St. Louis receivers and how they reel in passes over the middle then immediately duck for cover. Steve Mariucci tried to quiet him, but wasn’t quick enough to stop this Schulters slam: “They’re just so cocky, man, like you can’t touch them. Like their receivers, they expect you not to touch them. You push them and they’re like, ‘Oh, ref, did you see what he did to me?’ C’mon man, this is football. It’s like they’re primadonnas or something.”

Maybe the Rams had that in mind on their opening drive, which started at the San Francisco 41 after cornerback Aeneas Williams intercepted a Garcia pass on the third play of the game. Faulk ran eight times on the 12-play drive, finally breaking two tackles and stretching across the goal line for a six-yard score.

The most memorable play of that drive was the aforementioned fake timeout by Warner. Pittsburgh’s Kordell Stewart pulled off a similar ruse a week earlier.

“I guess I did enough to lull them to sleep,” Warner said.

Ram Coach Mike Martz looks like the lull-you-to-sleep type. Bland though he may be, he’s also one of the most innovative thinkers in football. His offense is named “Max-Q” for its similarities to the force that occurs one minute after a space shuttle launch.

Max-Q has max options. If the ball isn’t going to Faulk, it’s in the hands of turf-melting speedsters Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt or Az-Zahir Hakim. And you can’t forget about Ricky Proehl, although the 49ers seemed to. He led all receivers with six catches for 109 yards and a touchdown. It was his first 100-yard game since another big day against San Francisco three years ago.

“With our offense,” Proehl said, “no one knows who’s getting the ball.”

The game ball, however, belonged to the retooled St. Louis defense, which did nothing to hurt its No. 3 ranking. The 49ers, who came to town with the league’s second-ranked offense, gained a season-low 220 yards--only 3.7 yards a play. They didn’t get a first down until the second quarter, and faced deficits of 21-7 at halftime and 27-7 early in the fourth quarter.

“If this was a measuring stick, we [stunk],” Terrell Owens said.

Last season, the St. Louis defense gave up 471 points, the seventh-highest total in NFL history. This season’s U-turn is thanks in large part to defensive coordinator Lovie Smith and the high-profile additions of Chidi Ahanotu, Mark Fields, Kim Herring, Adam Archuleta and Williams.

As long as Martz is around, offense will take center stage in St. Louis. But defense is flourishing in the shadows.

“That’s the funny thing,” defensive end Grant Wistrom said. “We had the [No. 3-rated] defense in the NFL right now and people were talking about how this was going to be a high-scoring football game. That really sticks in your craw a little bit.

“Jeff Garcia said, ‘We’re going to hang 28 on them.’ We take that pretty personal.”

Just down the hallway, outside the visitors’ locker room, Garcia was eating those words.

He talked about the way the Rams owned the line of scrimmage and barely budged against the run, how they got in his face and how he couldn’t set his feet to throw.

How everything went downhill after he missed Owens with a long pass on the opening play of the game. His reverence for the Rams was obvious.

Even Schulters recanted. All that stuff about the St. Louis receivers being soft and hitting the deck after catching the ball? He assured reporters that was a compliment and receivers are perfectly entitled to protect themselves. And he almost sounded convinced.

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Back on Track

While the offense receives all the accolades, it’s the Ram defense that might lead them to another title. With seven new starters, this revamped unit might be better than the 1999 defense that helped St. Louis to a Super Bowl victory.

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Total Rush Pass Pts Int Sacks 1999 293.6 74.3 219.3 15.1 1.8 3.6 2000 343.4 106.1 237.3 29.4 1.2 3.2 2001 270.0 85.8 184.2 15.8 1.4 2.7

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Roy Jurgens