Bulger Proves Martz’s Worth

When Ram Coach Mike Martz finds himself without a great quarterback, he simply creates one.

Against the Chicago Bears Monday night, he will show off his new quarterback, Marc Bulger, who has won four straight while pinch-hitting for the old, Kurt Warner.

But even Warner -- the NFL’s reigning most valuable player, a two-timer, in fact -- never had a day like Bulger’s last Sunday.

Four of Bulger’s better passes were caught, but fumbled away, two of them returned for spectacular San Diego touchdowns. Then, throwing four touchdown passes that were held -- completing pass-play drives of 85, 88, 94 and 54 yards -- Bulger came back to win, 28-24. Clearly, the new model is, like the old model, something special.

From 0-4 to 4-0

The creation of two superior pro quarterbacks, in succession, is so difficult and unusual that Martz has had few predecessors. One was Bill Walsh of San Francisco, who built the NFL’s only five-time Super Bowl champion with a third-round draft pick, Joe Montana, and a castoff quarterback from Tampa Bay, Steve Young.

In the NFL’s only other comparable two-quarterback scene, Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin led the old Los Angeles Rams to the championship one day half a century ago, when Hamp Pool was the offensive coordinator under Coach Joe Stydahar.

On that team, owner Dan Reeves drafted Van Brocklin after he already had Waterfield

On this team, the coaches began with an Arena League graduate, Warner, and a free agent named Jamie Martin, a potential star who had been cut first by Jacksonville and then by Cleveland before he was cut by Washington.

Both quarterbacks soon went down with injuries as the Rams fell to 0-5 this fall with most of the same players who, earlier this year, had reached the Super Bowl -- where they lost in the last two minutes, after having won the Super Bowl championship two winters earlier.

The Rams were ready with a third quarterback, Bulger, a former sixth-round draft pick who had been cut by New Orleans and Atlanta.

Martz had used Bulger in every exhibition game, taking the time after each to go over the fine points of the incomparable Martz system with a third-stringer. The Rams finished the summer 0-4 -- but who cares about the exhibition record? Martz, improbable as it seems, had another quarterback.

He’s No. 1

There are two reasons to think of Martz as the nation’s finest football coach of the last 20 years or so, since at least Walsh. First, he developed those two successful, winning quarterbacks consecutively.

Other coaches have been hard put to get one. The league is full of passers who can’t win a Super Bowl -- or even four consecutive regular-season games.

Second, Martz’s teams have scored more than 500 points in three successive seasons.

Before this coach came to the Rams, only two teams had ever exceeded 500 points in one schedule of games, the 1983 Redskins and 1998 Vikings -- and neither could do it more than once.

Thus if San Francisco’s Young is the NFL’s No. 1 all-time passer because he has the highest passing rating, Martz is the league’s all-time No. 1 offensive coach because the record is there to show it.

Passing Wins

Despite the Rams’ three big seasons consecutively (1999-2001), Martz started 2002 with hordes of critics. Misunderstanding or underestimating pass offense after all the Rams have done with the thrown ball in his time, they keep saying he should run it with Marshall Faulk.

Although Martz’s pass offense had been primary in achieving records of 13-3, 10-6, and 14-2 in the last three seasons, they keep saying he lost the Super Bowl game because he wouldn’t run Faulk.

The fact is, Warner’s passes had the Rams in a 17-17 tie in the last two minutes, when it was New England quarterback Tom Brady’s surprise passing attack that won it, 20-17.

There was further evidence that the Ram coaches are on the right track against San Diego last Sunday, when the catalyst, unfortunately, was an injury. On the fourth play of the fourth quarter, Faulk, who is perhaps the premier pass-catching halfback of all time, went down with a game-ending leg problem.

At that moment, the Rams were losing, 24-14, but if Faulk’s injury should have doomed his team, it didn’t.

Freed from the necessity to prove anything to anybody but himself, Martz, through the rest of the fourth quarter, called one pass after another, as he used to do.

And Bulger completed them all -- except a spike and a throwaway or two -- to turn a 24-14 San Diego lead into a 28-24 Ram win.

QB Controversy?

The lesson for Monday night possibly, and on through the remainder of the schedule, is that Martz is more likely to succeed if, instead of heeding other people, he hears only Martz.

That has proved hard to do in the Rams’ last three starts, when on many occasions Martz called Faulk’s number when in his system a pass was the percentage call.

The critics, in other words, have been influencing the coach. It gets increasingly harder to ignore them the louder they shout.

Next up, almost certainly, is a Warner-Bulger quarterback controversy, as generated in part by Martz critics and in part by the nature of football. A quarterback controversy always makes a great story. So the coach is on the spot again, this one perhaps a no-win spot. He can get off it only by listening just to himself.

Brains and Courage

Here are three reasons most NFL coaches have been reluctant to throw, even though Knute Rockne, Sid Gillman, Walsh, Martz and a few others have shown them how:

* It takes an intelligent designer to draw up good pass plays, whereas dummies can persistently run the ball. For 83 years, NFL running-play advocates have used the same three simple-minded running plays: off-tackle, around end, or into the line. On the Ram team, Martz has designed hundreds of pass plays.

* It takes an extra helping of self-confidence for a passing coach to disregard the potential for interceptions. When an interception or two costs him the lead, or possibly a game, a one-word explanation will come instantly from almost every bar in town, not to mention every TV set -- “Turnovers.” Everything else the coach might do all day, good and bad, and everything else his team does, good or bad, will be forgotten while the critics constantly and thoughtlessly repeat, “Turnovers.”

* Above all, it takes more courage than most people have to face down the critics who gather like vultures whenever, for any reason, pass plays fail.

It’s much safer to run. If you run and fail, it’s the players who screwed up, not the coaching staff. Or so the media analysts say.

Five Choices

As NFL results get more unpredictable, here are five guesses on this week’s big games:

San Francisco to win by one or two points over San Diego at Qualcomm Stadium, site of this winter’s Super Bowl: Two good California teams can both run and pass, but the 49ers are deeper into the habit of winning.

New Orleans by three over Atlanta at the Georgia Dome: In a battle of impressive young quarterbacks, the Saints’ Aaron Brooks is more experienced in the art of rising to big games than Michael Vick, though Vick, the favorite this week, beat him last time at the Superdome

Kansas City over Buffalo by a touchdown at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs will hold their own in passing and will outrun the Bills.

New England over favored Oakland by a touchdown at Network Associates Coliseum: In a replay of last winter’s controversial Snow Bowl, the Raiders would like to get even but have shown only intermittently that they can play that well.

St. Louis by eight over Chicago at the Edward Jones Dome: In the Monday nighter, the Bears will exhibit the tools to disrupt the Ram defense but not the will for intelligent play calling.