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Rams have it tough Football in St. Louis sinking into a show me something statePosted: Friday October 11, 2002 6:17 PM
Three more pieces of great news for the black-cloud shrouded Rams Friday: 1. It appears that third-string quarterback Marc Bulger will start Sunday's game. 2. The Raiders, football's best team, will be 0-5 St. Louis' opponent in said game. 3. Left tackle Orlando Pace will miss the game with his torn calf muscle, meaning Grant Williams and John St. Clair, a pair of tackles that inspires fear in no defense, will be the big protectors for Bulger in his first NFL start. Wow. Can it get any worse for the star-crosssed Rams? I mean, can they get stun-gunned any more than they are right now? Nothing, other than Freddy Krueger's appointment as team trainer, could sink the Rams any lower than they are right now. I talked to Mike Martz Thursday, and he sounded as down as I've ever heard him. "The loss to Dallas staggered us," Martz said. That was two weeks ago. The rout in San Francisco couldn't have been unexpected, but it just seemed to put an exclamation point on the free fall. So what can Martz do now? Not much, really -- other than try to be consistent with his team and hope the talent that hasn't yet surfaced from guys who've spent their careers in the shadows on both sides of the ball can finally boost this team to a win or two before it gets really embarrassing. "We've still got some guys who don't understand how you have to play," Martz said. "For so many years here, they just waited for somebody else to make plays. Now THEY have to make plays." On Thursdays, I'm in the HBO studios for the Inside the NFL show. This Thursday, the discussion got around to the question of whether the Rams are the biggest disappointment in NFL history, or recent NFL history. Interesting topic. Weighty one. I say no. I say nothing in the NFL today is really shocking. At least not as shocking as, say, an 0-5 Giants start in 1987 after winning the Super Bowl nine months earlier -- and even that has an asterisk because three of those games were lost by an amateur replacement team. But let's look at the last few years. A four-win Falcons team one year makes the Super Bowl the next. A four-win Rams team one year wins the Super Bowl the next year. The Giants and Ravens average 7.5 wins between them one year, then play in the Super Bowl the next. The Patriots won five games in 2001, and were hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in New England the next winter. So I don't buy that this Rams collapse is one of historic proportions. It's just life in the NFL, circa the beginning of the 21st Century. Also, don't make too big a deal of Marshall Faulk walking off the set of an interview with Bob Costas on HBO this week. I wouldn't. Faulk, if you haven't heard, left the set when Costas asked him point-blank what happened with the Rams this fall, and said that Faulk hadn't been able to "bust loose" so far this season. My theory, and it is only a theory, is that Faulk, even though his touches per game is 20.8, versus a shade over 23 for his career (barely a difference there), would probably like to be able to try to pound the ball when all other offensive weapons are there. But he's in a Catch-22, because his offensive line has been so awful that he doesn't see the holes he used to see. When I asked Martz about it, he bristled. "Oh, come on," he said. "You've got to be kidding. You guys keep pressing that issue, and it's not an issue at all. He had 27 touches against Dallas and we scored 10 points. He knows what's going on." Whatever it is, it doesn't look like it's going to change soon. Especially not this Sunday, with the silver and black in town. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Check out his Monday Morning Quarterback column every -- and you should see this coming -- Monday morning.
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