A Perfect Season? Forget About It

For a minute the Rams were perfect. The field was short, the game was quick, a half of football seemed to last a minute, maybe a second. The Rams led the Saints, 24-6.

“Perfect season, baby,” a not very sober but very happy Ram fan was singing outside the TWA Dome. He didn’t need tickets and he didn’t need the second half either.

Don’t hand the St. Louis Rams the Super Bowl trophy and the crown and all the congratulations.

The Rams are beatable.

Quarterback Kurt Warner is capable of throwing four interceptions.

The backup running back can fumble.

The home dome advantage isn’t impossible to overcome.

There’s cheering among the Jets. Happiness in Detroit. Hoorays in Miami. These teams had all been bashed by the Rams this year, clubbed by the combined score of 111-24

The Rams were upset by the New Orleans Saints, 34-31, Sunday. As they were strutting proudly out of the first half, as their fans were discussing where this St. Louis team would stand in the history of great NFL teams, the Saints were treated to a challenge by coaches and captains to have some pride and play some football.

“We were embarrassed,” Saint quarterback Aaron Brooks said. “We were better then what we played in the first half.

“We were disgusted with ourselves and we didn’t want to be another team to have the score run up on.”

The Rams had been unstoppable, , incapable of losing, not interested in the little niceties, such as not using the onside kick as an offensive weapon when you are ahead, 31-7 (see: Rams vs. Jets, Oct. 21).

The 6-0 Rams were becoming the big, bad bullies of the NFL, the only team good enough to hate.

Coach Mike Martz was a genius, quarterback Warner was a genius. It didn’t matter if Marshall Faulk, the best player in football, was letting a bruised knee heal. The Ram offensive schemes were so maniacally indecipherable to the opposition that backup Trung Canidate could slip into Faulk’s role and instantly become the best player in football.

On top of that, the Ram defense was remade and remarkable.

“They’re supposed to be pretty good,” Saint center Jerry Fontenot said.

“We’ve heard all about them. But you know what? Too many mistakes, it doesn’t matter how big a genius the coach is, you’re going to lose in this league. We’ve got some pride too, you know.”

Warner seemed shell-shocked after the game. He had thrown four interceptions.

He had, for the first time in his career, quarterbacked the losing team in the TWA Dome.

“I’ve never been part of anything quite like this,” Warner said.

“In the first half, it all went right. Whatever we did, it worked. Whatever they did, it didn’t work.

“And the whole season has been like that. I think we had it in our minds a little that the outcomes of games was pretty much going to be up to us. And, really, it was. It was our mistakes that turned things around.”

The Saints saw it differently. They saw that the Rams used a trick play, a reverse that ended with Al-Zahir Hakim passing to wide receiver Isaac Bruce for 51 yards and the first touchdown, and a trick play again, a two-yard run by tight end Ernie Conwell, to score the second touchdown.

“I don’t know what that was,” said Saint wide receiver Joe Horn, who caught eight passes for 121 yards and two touchdowns.

“But it seemed like they thought they could experiment with us. And they did all this talking about their improved defense. You know what? We should have scored 40 points. If we’d done anything in the first half we would have.”

Saint running back Ricky Williams took the trick plays not as a sign of brilliant creativity, but as a sign of fear.

“Look at the way they scored,” Williams said. “We knew they couldn’t play with us. I think they knew that too. We’re too physical and we’re going to come after them every time we play.”

Martz had come under severe criticism after the onside kick late in the Ram rout of the Jets last weekend. Martz wasn’t worried about the bad feelings, saying the Rams weren’t concerned about whether other teams or coaches were upset.

“We do what we do. We have a lot of plays. We like to use them,” Martz said.

Now we know why. An 18-point halftime lead was gone by the end of the third quarter. The Saints scored 25 points in 15 minutes. If Martz had called for an onside kick in the first half, he would have been called a bully.

By the time John Carney was kicking the game-winning field goal for the Saints with a second left, Martz was holding his head in his hands. He wasn’t dreaming about trick plays or onside kicks.

“We know we gave it to them,” Martz said. “I told the players to put it away and move on. It hurts and stings, but we have to move on.”

And that’s the big challenge. Moving on. It had been happy time with talk of unbeaten seasons and Super Bowl romps. In one half, invincibility disappeared. “Hit ‘em hard,” Horn said. “That was what we wanted to do. Hit ‘em hard and keep on hitting. That’s what the NFL is about.”

*

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Bring on the Rams

(tabular data not included)