Real Rams Are Still Unknown to Coach : Pro football: Even after an impressive victory over Houston, Robinson has no idea of what to expect from his team.
Suppose you are John Robinson, coach of the Rams, and you are looking for explanations. You search for trends, for patterns, for anything that clues you in to what your football team will do next.
You spend eight long weekends doing this--half a season of analysis and self-examination.
And the Rams keep doing the unexplainable. You talk confidently after beating the Atlanta Falcons to improve the record to 2-4, saying that your team has climbed out of a hole. Then you are devastated by Pittsburgh, and the talk isn’t so confident.
You beat the Houston Oilers on Sunday, bringing your record back up to 3-5. Can you say that everything is sunny again?
Not this time. You have learned at least that much about your schizophrenic team.
“Will I be more cautious this time about talking about holes?†Robinson said Monday, repeating a question. “I don’t know. We’re just going to try to beat the (New York) Giants (next Sunday).â€
Half a season gone by, and the truth is that the Rams’ sole identifying trait is that they have none. They wander into the second half of 1990 without definition, a fuzzy picture waiting for somebody to adjust the vertical hold.
The Rams, woeful on pass defense all year, have in the last three weeks beaten two of the best pass offenses in football. The Rams, consistently strong against simple, physical teams in the past, have in the last four weeks been pounded by two simple, physical teams. Unexplainable.
“The real erratic changes have been shocking,†Robinson said. “Pittsburgh was particularly shocking. That one really was from left field, it seemed like.â€
And the Rams’ solid 17-13 victory over Houston Sunday was another shocker. Their until-now dismal defense suffocated the Oilers’ No. 1 offense, holding them to fewer points than any team has scored against the Rams this season.
The Rams would like to think that this is the way things will be from now on, that their troubles are over at last, halfway through the season they thought would net them a Super Bowl berth. And with the NFC still a mess of mediocrity--only four teams are above .500--they are in the race yet.
But they know better than to assume that one normal, good football game makes them a normal, good football team, don’t they?
“That was very much like a lot of the games we played last year,†Robinson said. “Very typical.
“For the first time this year, I had that feeling. I had the feeling that we were playing the game somewhere near our capabilities. You know, not doing anything perfect or anything, but just somewhere near our capabilities.â€
The Rams beat Houston’s run-and-shoot scheme by flooding the secondary with defenders playing zones, daring Moon to dink and dunk. They needed a huge defensive play at the end to win, but they won. It was a plan and a pattern, Robinson noted, very similar to the schemes the Rams used to beat teams last year.
The Rams tried to junk that sort of defense over the off-season, reasoning that they needed to increase their pass rush if they ever were going to challenge the San Francisco 49ers, the one obstacle they failed to hurdle last season.
They pushed two young players, Brian Smith and Bill Hawkins, into the pass-rush spotlight, moved around a couple of veterans and crossed their fingers.
And it turned out that by turning away from what almost worked in 1989, the Rams turned mediocre--at best--on defense. They trashed the new defensive system after four weeks, and now they are back to the old, dull methods.
They aren’t the new and improved Rams, but Robinson says it became clear that old-and-under-control is better than new-and-disappointing.
“It’s not impressive, and you don’t get to be a genius doing any of this stuff, but sometimes it works, particularly when you don’t have a lot of alternatives,†Robinson said.
“Of course, we’re frustrated because we took some calculated risks to try to get to be a more pass-rush-oriented team, and we’ve all documented how many setbacks we’ve had in that attempt.â€
Which skips over the point that if they switched schemes because they thought it was the only way they could beat the 49ers, what happens when they play San Francisco the old way? Joe Montana will give us that answer Nov. 25, if the question is relevant then.
But more immediately, the Rams could not select a more opportune time to start playing the way they did in 1989, because their new opponents are the undefeated Giants, a team the Rams beat handily during the regular season and then not so handily in the division playoffs last year.
The Giants also are the most basic, physical team in football right now, and Robinson says he knows that he should be concerned about that.
“In the past, we would welcome these kinds of teams,†Robinson said. “We’d say, ‘Oh boy, this kind of team we do well against.’ It’s hard to run the ball on us and all that. And yet this year there’s been such a turnaround in that, I am perplexed by it.â€
This year, Robinson has been perplexed almost constantly. So one more week of it doesn’t mean much, does it?
Go beyond the scoreboard
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