Scouting Report
4 - St. Louis Rams With patience wearing thin after another sorry
season, it's time for the Rams and their quixotic
quarterback to say goodbye to the
alibis
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Banks can't hope to earn the really big bucks until he puts
up some richer numbers of his own on the
field.
(Stephen Dunn/ALLSPORT)
| His dog
has
made a full recovery, as has his go-to
receiver. His offensive line is stable if unspectacular,
unlike a year ago, when an injury, a steroid bust and a
holdout reduced it to patchwork; when his starting running
back turned out to be more of a threat to
motorists on area freeways than to
opposing defenses. Unlike last year, Rams
quarterback Tony Banks earned his $25,000 bonus for making it to
more than 80% of the team's off-season workouts. Unlike
last year, he has his own private coach and an
offense that has been tailored to his skills. What he no longer
has is
excuses.
"This is the first time—junior college, college,
pros—that I've been in the same offensive system two
years in a row," says Banks as he walks off the
practice field in early August. "I've never felt this
relaxed or
confident."
"That's good," says wide receiver Isaac Bruce,
who appears to have regained his Pro Bowl form after being
hobbled by a nagging hamstring injury for the first half of
last season. "We'll go as far as Tony can carry
us."
An acne-prone lad leaning on the fence says, "Good
practice today, Tony." A stout woman shouts,
"Tony, we love you!" These
fans may feel
differently, it is pointed out, if the Rams open with a couple of
lopsided losses. "Oh, yeah," says Banks, whose
performance in this, his third season, will determine
whether he lands a) a monster contract or b) on another
team's roster. "They'll be the first
ones
booing."
Few have as much cause to boo as Rams fans, whose team lost
10 games in 1996 and topped that by losing 11 last season,
including six of eight at home. As the season wore on, they
had more brickbats for Banks than bouquets. While throwing
for a very
respectable 3,254 yards, he completed just 51.7% of his passes,
third worst in the league. Over the past two seasons he has
fumbled 36 times and been sacked 90 times, a pair of
gruesome stats for which an underachieving offensive line
must take some
responsibility.
"We've got to do a better job in front of him,"
says second-year left tackle Orlando Pace, whose long
preseason holdout and knee injury (he missed three games in
November) contributed to the instability of a unit that was
a mess even before last season
started. Center Bern Brostek suffered a career-ending back
injury, and left guard Gerald Perry was cut after testing
positive for steroids. As Banks points out, "Our line
hasn't been very
good."
Pace is doing his part to change that. In search of more
explosiveness, he dropped 20 pounds in the
off-season—he's now a twiggy 315—while gaining
muscle mass. He still has a ways to go when it comes to
keeping veteran pass-rushers off his quarterback,
but as a run-blocker, gushes coach Dick Vermeil, "he
may be the finest I've
seen."
A stabilized line—the rapid progress of left guard
Fred Miller, a converted tackle, has particularly delighted
Vermeil—bodes well for an offense that rushed for just
97.7 yards per game in '97. Recidivist time bomb Lawrence
Phillips is out at running
back; Robert Holcombe, a second-rounder from Illinois, and
preseason free-agent signee Greg Hill, the ex-Chief, are
in. Even a slight improvement in the running game, coupled
with more rollouts and plays run out of two-back and
shotgun sets, will take
some of the pressure off Banks, whose biggest problem,
paradoxically, seems to be that he takes too much pressure
off
himself.
Until this season Rams coaches have complained that the
low-key Banks seemed to treat his NFL gig more like a hobby
than a career. The San Diego native has made no secret of
his preference for pickup hoops to
weightlifting—"Basketball is good for my
cutting, my jumping, my cardiovascular," he says a bit
defensively—and he caught a ton of flak late last
season when he missed a practice to attend to his
rottweiler, Felony, who had been hit by a car. (Felony was
O.K.)
| Schedule |
| Sept. | 6 | NEW ORLEANS |
| 13 | MINNESOTA |
| 20 | at Buffalo |
| 27 | ARIZONA |
| Oct. | 4 | OPEN DATE |
| 11 | N.Y. JETS |
| 18 | at Miami |
| 25 | SAN FRANCISCO |
| Nov. | 1 | at Atlanta |
| 8 | at Chicago |
| 15 | at New Orleans |
| 22 | CAROLINA |
| 29 | ATLANTA |
| Dec. | 3 | at Philadelphia (Thurs.) |
| 13 | NEW ENGLAND |
| 20 | at Carolina |
| 27 | at San Francisco |
|
|
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Newly appointed quarterbacks coach Mike White also noticed
a lack of urgency in Banks's drops. Banks worked hard in
the off-season to make his footwork more precise.
"Tony's looked good," Vermeil says, riffling
through computer printouts tabulating
Banks's completions during practice. "But the jury will be
out on him until the season starts. It's a contract year
for him. [Banks will be a free agent at season's end, and
his status as the team's 33rd-highest salaried player is a
sore point with him.] He
wants to get paid. Well, he'd better get
going."
Vermeil and his coaches say they have no idea how Banks
will fare. Yes, he has looked much improved in practice,
says one coach. "But that's like hitting on the
driving range. Let's see how he does with a sidehill lie
and the wind in his
face."
Banks can't wait to tee it up. "We've worked too hard
to get the same results," he says. "We'll be
better." Then he says it himself: "There are no
excuses." —Austin Murphy
By the Numbers | Inside Slant | Lineup
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