It Comes to Pass for NFL Coaches

The Ram carnival, which plays Detroit Monday night, is the NFL’s best show in, exactly, a half century--since Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin took the Rams to the championship the same way in 1951: with fast receivers and arching, long forward passes. So if you’re anywhere near the Silverdome this week, you might not want to miss it.

In a league that’s added 20 franchises to the 12 that played in 1951, the thing that makes the 2001 Rams so different is that they start out each game throwing the ball, and then keep it up. As schooled by Coach Mike Martz, they threw it on nearly every down to get a 21-10 halftime lead on Miami last Sunday, then went on passing in the second half to batter the defensively famous Dolphins, 42-10.

That was some show.

But as usual, it was more than a show.

Under Martz, the 2001 Rams, like the 1951 Rams, are a striking success story.

There are 30 other head coaches in the NFL now and not one of the others seems to understand that nearly continuous passing provides the most certain way to outscore their opponents. Without exception, these 30 CEOs think they have to run the ball--often--to make a pass offense effective. To Martz, that’s nonsense. It’s true that he does call running plays from time to time, but that’s only because, like the rest of us, he loves to see Marshall Faulk run. To win, Martz throws the ball.

Fine the Coaches

The Ram quarterback, Kurt Warner, whose passing confounded Miami’s clever defensive team, is Martz’s indispensable individual, but Warner’s time in pro football is limited if the NFL allows his opponents to get away with the kind of illegal hit he absorbed in the second half last week from 320-pound Dolphin defensive lineman Tim Bowens. After Warner had lofted a long one perfectly to Ram wide receiver Torry Holt for a 45-yard touchdown, Bowens raced full speed into the passer with his helmeted head down, smashing him into the ground.

Although, an instant later, Warner got up laughing, there was great artistry but nothing really humorous about that stark moment. With the ball gone, Bowens, breaking the rules, had made no effort whatever to hold back his charge in an assault that seemed plainly designed to knock the opposing quarterback out of the game. Other NFL defensive men were as usual imbued with that same spirit Sunday, when Oakland linebacker Elijah Alexander, among others, made the same kind of late hit, flooring a Seattle passer, Trent Dilfer.

It seems certain now that the only way the league can put an end to this illegality, which is immeasurably helpful to NFL cheaters as well as threatening to pro football’s future in the entertainment industry, is to fine the coach as well as the player. The Oakland and Miami leaders, Jon Gruden and Dave Wannstedt, should be fined a full game’s salary along with Alexander and Bowens.

Play Selection

The most overlooked reason for success in modern-era football is surely smart play selection, which is at least as important to the Rams as the quality of their players--as great as they are when they line up Warner, Faulk, and Holt with receivers Isaac Bruce, Az-Zahir Hakim, Ricky Proehl, and the others. One Martz objective as the Ram play-caller is to avoid third down--the down that inevitably plays into the hands of defensive people, particularly when it’s third and four or more. Instructively, en route to the touchdowns that broke the Miami game open, Warner’s team did it this way:

* On a 10-play, 76-yard drive to the 7-0 touchdown, the Rams, attacking with first- and second-down passes exclusively except for one third-down pass and one run, reached the Miami 3-yard line, from which they scored on a third-down pass. On both third-down plays, Martz, who hadn’t had to prematurely disclose his third-down strategy, was ready with just the calls needed to penetrate one of the league’s fine defenses: first a Warner shot to Hakim, and then, for the touchdown, another one to Proehl

* On a four-play, 70-yard drive to the Rams’ 14-7 touchdown, they started with a trick play and followed with passes, three passes in a row, to keep the Dolphins continually off balance.

* On an eight-play, 69-yard drive to the Rams’ 21-10 touchdown, Martz called four passes on first down, two on second down, then a third-down draw play, and finally a fourth-and-one scoring pass.

Meaningless Stat

A favorite statistic of most NFL coaches is third-down conversions. For example, the Indianapolis Colts attributed their stunning 44-14 upset in New England Sunday largely to third-down failures by quarterback Peyton Manning and running back Edgerrin James. As James said: “The reason for us not scoring in the (decisive 20-0) first half was (inability) to move the ball on third downs.” But James is simply reflecting the conservatism of his leader, Jim Mora, who, like Miami’s Wannstedt and most other NFL coaches, wants to a) run the ball on first and second down, then b) blame the pass offense for breaking down on third down.

Elsewhere, the Wannstedt-types are repeatedly egged on by most of the nation’s conservative old coaches, Mike Ditka and Jerry Glanville among them. These people all, however, seem misguided. For, after running-play failures on first and second down, a third-down pass is a test of pass defense, not passer. Because there is rarely a running-play threat on third and four or more, defensive teams should, and usually do, break up the third-down pass they anticipate. As Martz demonstrates each week with the Ram offense, the third-down conversion statistic, whatever its meaning to defensive players, is meaningless to the offense:

* Offensively, the Rams are seldom in third down. o Tactically, they’ve learned that third-down passing puts a load of usually unnecessary pressure on the quarterback, who can expect to confront mayhem-mined blitzers more often on that down than any other.

* Strategically, they’ve learned that a first-down run tends to fail against good defensive players, who lie in wait for just such a call because most teams run on first down. A first-down run leaves the offensive team with only two downs to make 10 yards, which may be the norm in three-down Canadian football, but this is America. Over and over again, most NFL teams, when their goal is a long ball-control drive, eventually run out of downs if they keep running on first down.

Conservative Disaster

The Miami passer, a bright athlete named Jay Fiedler, demonstrated football’s conservative-offense problem in the second quarter of the Ram game, where, after coming through brilliantly on several third downs, he lined up for one third-down play too many at the Ram 6-yard line in what was then a 7-7 game. On the last play of a long drive, as he dropped back to throw, the blitzing Rams ganged up on him, harassing him into a fumble, and changing the momentum of an afternoon that until then had seemed to be Miami’s.

It’s worth noting that on the Ram series that came next, when Warner drove quickly to the 14-7 touchdown, the Rams defeated the Miami cornerback pair known as the NFL’s best this year, Sam Madison and Patrick Sustain, who weren’t so much beaten as bypassed. Against a typical pro club--one that lines up numerous running-play blockers but only two wide receivers--Madison and Sustain cover superbly. But the Rams, on most of their big passes, went at Miami not with two wide receivers but three and sometimes four, plus Faulk

Madison and Sustain can handle almost any two receivers but not, of course, four or five. A week earlier, they had shut down the Oakland Raiders as Miami won, 18-15, but there are numerous differences between the Rams and Raiders. For one thing, the Raiders want to run with their good running backs, Tyrone Wheatley and Charlie Garner. For another, the Rams have been toughening up in difficult road games at Philadelphia and San Francisco, from which they emerged 2-0 but only ahead in total points by seven points, 50-43. Although the Ram team welcomed Miami in its home opener, the truth is that, in the first half, Fiedler looked for all the world like he could hold his own in a shootout with Warner, except that, as usual, his coaches wanted to run the ball.

Home Field Wins for Giants

The hometown edge in NFL football, which worked against the Dolphins in St. Louis, was even more harmful to New Orleans Sunday in the New York Giants’ home opener, where the Saints could feel the emotion as definitely as they felt any Giant. Almost certainly, that was the most emotional place that any good NFL team has ever had to visit--and still the Saints were in the game up to and including the last play, when they scored what could have been, with a successful 2-point conversion, the tying touchdown. The Saint receiver who got the ball in the end zone that time might not have bothered to catch it. For after a moment, he was flagged by three officials for not one but two penalties, nullifying the touchdown; enabling New York to hold on, 21-13, and seeming to verify the NFL’s frequent visiting-team lament that the officials can always see a penalty if they wish to.

But in the circumstances, with their fourth-quarter charge, the Saints showed that they’re going to be a handful this season for the Rams or any other opponent. They attacked the Giants with the better quarterback, Aaron Brooks; with two running backs, Ricky Williams and rookie Deuce McAllister, who are as gifted as the Giant pair; with offensive and defensive linemen who are a match for New York’s or anybody’s, and with, probably, the better coaching staff. In the end, the Saints outgained New York, 330 yards to 253, suggesting that, before Sept.11, they would have beaten the New York team anywhere.

Today in New Orleans’ home opener at the Superdome, Minnesota Viking quarterback Daunte Culpepper, a one-man gang now with all-pro runner Robert Smith in retirement, will provide a better test for the Saint defense than New York did. The one-man team disposed of Tampa Bay last week, 20-16.

Ravens Co-favored

The Baltimore Ravens have rejoined the Rams as co-favorites for the Super Bowl just in time to give the slumping Tennessee Titans a reason to go for an upset at Baltimore today. It perhaps isn’t so that everything depends on who plays under center for the Titans this time, their best quarterback, Steve McNair, who has been injured, or replacement Neil O’Donnell, but McNair has shown that he has the toughness to fight off the stern Baltimore defense and O’Donnell hasn’t. The way the Ravens shut down the Denver Broncos last week--in Denver--sent out shock waves everywhere in a league that has been wondering about the new Baltimore quarterback, Elvis Grbac, who seven days earlier couldn’t even beat humble Cincinnati.

With their two ill-fated injuries, the Broncos have, of course, lost their greatest player, wide receiver Ed McCaffrey, and their most famous running back, Terrell Davis, and so they might no longer have enough threats to overpower the versatile Baltimore defense. That is, Denver Coach Mike Shanahan might not as yet have had quite enough time to train new ones. But he will. The AFC championship race is going to be resolved this winter, no doubt, on the day that Shanahan meets up again with Baltimore Coach Brian Billick.