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The book on beating St. Louis
Posted: Monday November 01, 1999 07:19 PM
Week 8 Awards | Top 10 Teams | 10 Things I Think I Think Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag. NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- After the Rams' crushing loss at Adelphia Coliseum Sunday, this is the scene I saw in the losers' locker room: Kurt Warner , wunderkind, head in hands, motionless, staring at the floor. The entire offensive line, sitting at their lockers, motionless, staring at the ground. The receivers and tight ends, speechless, eyes to the ground, shuffling slowly in the marathon process of undressing, showering and getting the heck out of town. I tapped Warner on the left shoulder. He looked me in the eye. I said something sportswriterish, like: "You played hard ... '' He was unmoved. "I blew the game,'' he said softly but with certainty. "We gave it away. I gave it away.'' In a way, Warner's right. This is the first time he did not have the Cinderella magic in him this year, the magic that helped the Rams start the year 6-0. He fumbled four times on hard hits by the surprisingly tenacious Titans defense, and lost two of them. But actually what beat St. Louis was -- and I underscore this, because I don't say such gee-whiz things lightly -- a brilliant Tennessee defensive game plan. The night before the game, at the Rams' hotel in downtown Nashville, coach Dick Vermeil already had a clue. "Teams are starting to play us different now,'' he said. "We'll see what tomorrow brings.'' What it brought was a fine blueprint of how to beat the Rams offense. Here's how: 1. Pressure Kurt Warner. No kidding. But teams had been laying off the story of the year because they knew he had so many weapons and could find them quickly. Tennessee pressured or sacked Warner 16 times in the game, leading to his grim mood. "Tell him not to feel bad,'' Titans linebacker Joe Bowden told me afterward. "He played with a lot of heart. We gained a lot of respect for him.'' Now, if Warner gets heat, he'll have to be more accurate in completing the short stuff over the middle and better at finding wideouts in tight coverage deep. 2. Use every bit of speed you have on defense. "I don't think they'd ever seen anything like me,'' said the oh-so-humble defensive end Jevon Kearse, who tormented the Rams' line. Kearse was forever hurrying Warner's delivery, and you got the feeling St. Louis never was able to get into any rhythm -- fatal for a get-in-a-groove offense like that. 3. Flood the secondary with extra backs. Jeff Fisher did something very smart on a dozen snaps -- he used eight defensive backs to negate the impact of Marshall Faulk . Other than on Hail Marys, do you ever see eight DBs in coverage? I don't. Faulk still got 184 total yards, but this move had further reprecussions. No wideouts ran free over the middle. They were challenged every step of the way. "After a while,'' Bowden said, "our defensive backs made them get alligator arms.'' 4. Vary the fronts you play. Tennessee alternated three- and four-man lines, screwing up the blocking patterns of the young St. Louis line. There were plays that the Titans had no linebackers in the game. There were plays they had four. The Rams could never quite figure out what they were seeing. The whole game was a changeup. As Vermeil was leaving his postgame press conference, he had the look of a man
who'd been down this road before. Things would get better, he said. The team
needed this, he said. Someone asked him if the Rams suffered any major injuries
in the game. "No,'' said the coach of the no-longer-unbeatens. "Just a
few broken
hearts.''
Week 8 Awards OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: New Orleans RB Ricky Williams, for his 40-carry, 179-yard, dominating performance against the Browns that should have resulted in a victory. But, as you know, the miracle Browns Hail-Maryed the Saints out of a win. In the midst of the New Orleans meltdown these days, Williams is emerging. Three weeks ago he told me that it had been so long since he played like the real Ricky Williams, he'd forgotten what that was. Now no one's forgetting. DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Indianapolis DE Chad Bratzke, who made one of the best individual plays of this, or any other, season in the 34-24 Colts' win over the Cowboys. After sacking Troy Aikman in the fourth quarter and forcing a fumble, Bratzke, while falling, batted the ball away and prevented the Cowboys from recovering. Then he rose and chased the ball he batted, recovering it in a pile near the Dallas goal line. Asterisk: He fumbled, but a teammate recovered. SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK: St. Louis WR Chris Thomas, for making the play every punt-team gunner (the flyers on the outside of the formation who try to down the punt) dreams of in the second quarter of the Titans-Rams game. Punting from midfield, Rick Tuten rainbowed the ball so that it began to fall to earth inside the Titans' five. In slowing stride, Thomas caught the ball and stopped on a dime at the Titans' three. Perfect. Funny, but the night before, coach Dick Vermeil struggled with whether to have Thomas active for the game. "It all comes down to whether I want a fifth receiver or a third tight end,'' Vermeil said at the Rams' team snack. (That's what NFL teams actually calls this mini-meal, by the way, with burgers and chicken and salads at 9:30ish the night before games.) "But we do have a lot of four-receiver formations in the game plan. Thomas is a great special-teams player.'' COACH OF THE WEEK: Kansas City coach Gunther Cunningham, for two reasons. For engineering a 34-0 whitewashing of the Chargers, as he continues to turn around a team I thought would waste away in mediocreville. And for his appreciation of where he is. "I was driving home last night and I was at a stoplight and it just hit me,'' he said last week. "Here I was driving this big Cadillac. I just left this beautiful office in a stadium where 80,000 people come to watch me work. I was driving to this beautiful home on a golf course, where my family was waiting for me. I have one of only 31 jobs. There's only one place that something like this can happen. There's only one country where you can show up a scrawny German kid who can't speak any English and make something of yourself.'' GOAT OF THE WEEK: St. Louis RT Fred Miller. Five false starts
in a crucial game? And a hold on Jevon Kearse that the Titans declined, with
another that was accepted? Miller ought to be Goat of the Month, and he ought to
just hope that the angioplasty offensive line coach Jim Hanifan had on
Wednesday
holds.
The Top 10 1. Jacksonville
(6-1).
The 10 Things I Think I Think This Week 1. I think this will happen Monday night in Green Bay: Seattle coach Mike Holmgren will get booed by 60& of the crowd. He will feel pangs of I-can't-believe-I-left when he walks on the field. He will hug Brett Favre before the game and mean it. He will shake Ron Wolf 's hand before the game and greet him warmly and sincerely mean most of it, and he will let Jon Kitna loose and give him the freedom to throw downfield and test Packer cornerback Tyrone Williams (the weak link in the Green Bay secondary). And if Kitna plays efficiently, I think Seattle wins 27-20. That's a big if. I refuse to quantify it further. 2. I think Coach Daniel Snyder just might be painting himself a game ball this morning at Redskin Park. Now seriously ... Norv Turner told me two interesting things Saturday night: Snyder never raised his voice in all the emotional meetings of last week. And Snyder never asked for the head of defensive coordinator Mike Nolan on a platter. Turner also said: "What a book I could write someday.'' My prediction is Snyder will not demand Nolan's firing until after the season but he will during the off-season, regardless of how the Redskins finish. 3. I think the stat of the week, at least mine, is that Kurt Warner is the 47th-highest-paid player on his own team. 4. I think I do not like my job security if I am Bruce Coslet this morning, and I think I would be peering outside the front door of the Bengals' practice facility to see if any agent types are floating around the parking lot. Agents for other coaches, I mean. 5. I think there is nobody in football who picks a hole like Marshall Faulk. 6. I think Terry Bowden might look very good on the sideline again. Sounds good, anyway. Flipping the channels on the college games Saturday, I heard Bowden say after ABC showed some highlight: "There's a lot of football left in this football game.'' The story would be if there was some field hockey left in this football game. 7. I think I keep hearing how the game is down this year because of all the retirements and injuries and non-stars turning into stars. And I disagree. Change has been the way of NFL life for years. The game really isn't very much different today than at the start of the decade, when free agency was still a players' dream. Five top-rated quarterbacks in 1990: Jim Kelly, Warren Moon, Steve DeBerg, Phil Simms, Randall Cunningham. Five top-rated quarterbacks so far in 1999: Warner, Brad Johnson, Kitna, Drew Bledsoe, Peyton Manning. Not much difference there. Teams averaged 1.99 turnovers per game in 1990, 1.95 this season. There's one penalty per game more this year than in 1990. Buffalo won the AFC title game by 48 points. A strong Giants' defense stifled San Francisco in the NFC title game; with two of the greatest offensive players of all time in the 49ers lineup, Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, seven of the game's eight scores were field goals. The biggest play in the Super Bowl, likely, was a 47-yard missed field goal by Scott Norwood. The champion Giants' postseason MVP, likely, was kicker Matt Bahr. I'm not belittling 1990, just saying it's a cyclical game. 8a. I think the San Diego Chargers would be very smart to intensify negotiations with defensive tackle Norman Hand, one of the best run-pass defensive linemen in the NFL. Hand makes $500,000 this year and could be a $4-million-a-year player on the open market if he becomes a free agent in February. "I really want to stay,'' Hand told me recently. He's got a comfort level with best buddy John Parrella, his neighbor on the line, and both love playing in tandem with Junior Seau. The three of them are often in the locker room or roaming the field half-dressed by 8 a.m. for 1 p.m. games. I asked Parrella about being a throwback, get-your-hands-dirty type of player, and whether he would have enjoyed teaming with Hand in a previous life on an NFL line. "I'd like it, but can I ask one favor? Can I bring Junior with us?'' 8b. I think ditto about those negotiations for the Tennessee Titans and pending free-agent tackle Jon Runyan. 9. I think Charlie Batch is going to be one special player. The way he evaded the blitz two or three times Sunday night in the impressive win over Tampa Bay was perfect for today's football, when the number of blitzers often outnumber the blockers. 10. I think there is something about the Silverdome. In the air, maybe. In the goo oozing up from the turf, maybe. But teams just aren't the same teams when they play there. Ask Green Bay every year. Ask Tampa Bay last night. There is a weird kind of home-field advantage there. The only thing I can figure is the noise in there gets to people worse than in other stadia. The noise is crippling. I mean, Mike Alstott fumbling on the one? False start after false start? All domes should be blown up. We'd all admit that, right? Well, if that one's blown up around 2002 or 2003 for a new open-air stadium downtown, I say the Lions aren't as good. Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag.
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