Flawed Secondary Leaves Rams Less Than Perfect

Like giddy school children, they embraced, celebrating the most unlikely of Ram comebacks, basking in its total improbability.

It was a sight to see: Ram executive vice president John Shaw--a man not given to these sorts of public outbursts--and team counsel Jay Zygmunt dancing an impromptu victory jig in the glass-encased visiting owners’ box at Rich Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., in the wee hours of Tuesday. They laughed. They hugged. They let the joy of a 6-0 record wash over them.

Flipper Anderson had just plucked a wobbly Jim Everett pass out of the foggy air, slipped through two would-be Buffalo Bill tacklers and then raced 78 yards for a miracle touchdown and a seemingly insurmountable 20-16 lead with only 1:22 remaining in the game. Everett raised his arms in triumph. Ram teammates began their 82-second countdown.

Eighty-two seconds. Is that all it took for Buffalo quarterback Frank Reich, who had never started a National Football League game, to dissect the Ram nickel defense like a science-class frog? Can it be that simple to complete seven consecutive passes (nine, if you count two in a row from the previous Buffalo scoring drive) and travel 64 yards against the league’s only undefeated team?

Ask Shaw and Zygmunt, who must have felt a little silly as they watched Reich zip a pass to an open Andre Reed in the end zone as the clock clicked down to 16 seconds.

Ask cornerback LeRoy Irvin, who was reduced to offering gracious postgame compliments of Reich, the same quarterback who had completed five of 15 first-half passes for a scant 33 yards and an interception.

And ask the Bills, who probably still can’t believe their good fortune.

This was a Ram loss that could have been, should have been, a Ram victory. Somehow, though, it slipped away and the Rams now find themselves, much like everyone else, less than perfect. It is a sobering thought, what with the apparently rejuvenated New Orleans Saints on their way, followed by Ram trips to Chicago and Minnesota and then an Anaheim appointment with the New York Giants.

Looking back, you wonder, as must Coach John Robinson, how it all happened. How do you explain a defeat against a team that was missing one of its Pro Bowl linebackers (Shane Conlan), its Pro Bowl quarterback (Jim Kelly) and one of its starting cornerbacks (Derrick Burroughs)? And since when do championship teams, such as the Rams aspire to be, blow leads in what amounted to 66 seconds?

It was simple, actually.

First, you ask Ram running back Greg Bell about his return to Buffalo, the organization that happily included him in the Eric Dickerson deal two years ago. Bell, as is his custom, offered his frank and unedited version of the Bills. Kudos, they weren’t.

The quotes, as they always do, somehow found their way to the Bills’ locker room. In the cloistered world that is pro football, mild words became insults, insults became motivational tools. Thus, when the Bills’ defense arrived at Rich Stadium Monday evening, they did so with Bell in mind.

Result: 44 yards in 21 carries (zero yards in the second half). And no matter how hard Bell tried to downplay his pregame remarks, they had an effect. He might not have incited a riot, but he helped give the Bills a common purpose, which was to shut Bell up and shut him out. They managed to do both.

“He helped a little bit,” nose tackle Fred Smerlas said, trying to suppress a grin. “We realized we weren’t playing together.”

Next, the Rams squandered at least three opportunities to take advantage of wonderful field position, a valuable commodity in a game controlled partly by the whims of the weather. The Rams began drives on the Buffalo 46- and 33-yard lines, as well as their own 48 . . . and came away with nothing. In addition, Ram defensive backs let several likely interceptions slip through their hands.

This was the kind of game Robinson feared the most: His famed Ram running attack was rendered ineffective, as evidenced by the time of possession (13 of their 16 offensive series lasted less than three minutes); the Ram passing attack was hindered by a cold October rain, and the Ram pass defense, ranked 28th in the league, proved perhaps that statistics don’t lie.

Ram followers will point to a pair of questionable non-pass interference calls in the Bills’ end zone late in the third quarter. Replays seemed to show that receiver Henry Ellard had been tugged and turned by defenders on two successive pass attempts by Everett. A penalty would have placed the ball on the one-yard line and almost ensured a Ram touchdown.

And how fortunate, they might add, that two of Scott Norwood’s three field goals barely squeezed inside the uprights or edged over the crossbar.

None of this matters now, except that maybe a lesson has been learned by the Rams. It is: Victory dances mean nothing without a win as a partner.