Run To Glory

While no other team averages as many as 30 points per game, the Rams are putting up 41.3. How do you stop them? "We'll make them go on long drives," says one coach on St. Louis's November schedule. "We'll give them the 12-yard completions, as long as we've got a safety between the receiver and the goal line. And we'll tell our offense: Don't snap the ball until two seconds are left on the 40-second clock. We won't stop them, but we can control how many possessions they have."

The best solution, ultimately, is to do what Bill Parcells made snoozingly successful with the Giants in the late 1980s and early '90s: Play clockball. En route to winning it all in 1990, New York held the juggernaut 49ers and the explosive Bills to a combined 32 points by playing keepaway in the NFC Championship Game and the Super Bowl. Jimmy Johnson turned around the Cowboys in the early '90s with a balanced attack, but running back Emmitt Smith was his closer. Now teams are running to save games and to keep quick-strike offenses chilling on the sidelines. "If you look across the board, teams are trying to keep the fast-break offenses off the field," Robinson says. "That's why I think everybody's emphasizing the run a little more."

Conversely, the teams that can't run late suffer. Perfect case in point: Miami, which was trying to protect a 30-7 fourth-quarter lead against the Jets on Oct. 23. All the Dolphins had to do was run time off the clock on a couple of drives to keep the ball away from the Jets. Though Lamar Smith had run for 140 yards in the first three periods, Miami coach Dave Wannstedt chose a bad time to rest his starter for a series. ("We just wanted to give Lamar a break," Wannstedt says.) The Dolphins went three-and-out on that possession, Miami's first of the fourth quarter, and on the next two as well (with Smith picking up a total of only three yards). Because Miami couldn't run much time off the clock, the Jets got five fourth-quarter possessions, scored on all of them, forced overtime and won 40-37. "The Dolphins lost for one reason," says Raiders player personnel executive Mike Lombardi. "They couldn't run in the fourth quarter."

The second half, and the fourth quarter in particular, is Robert Smith's favorite time of the game. At 6'2" and 210 pounds Smith is fairly slender for a dominant back. He looks as if he should be a make-'em-miss runner, and he tries to play that way. But he can also pound and mash inside. Smith benefits from Minnesota's terrific passing game, which keeps the strong safety away from the line of scrimmage on all but obvious running plays. A defense can put an eighth man up to stop a great runner like Cincinnati's Corey Dillon because it has no respect for the Bengals' passing attack. But even when that eighth man starts to creep up in the fourth quarter, Smith can be a terrific closer.

"The fourth quarter is the time a great back has to dominate, and I love it when they put it on me," says Smith. The fire in his voice is unmistakable. "There's no better feeling in football."

The Vikings were nursing a 23-20 lead in their season opener against the Bears and had the ball on their 35-yard line with six minutes left. Culpepper handed the ball to Smith for a seemingly routine run off left tackle. With a Sayers-like juke at the line Smith made two defenders miss and he was off. Fifty-nine yards later he was finally shoved out-of-bounds. The Vikings scored three plays later. Ball game. "There's something about a long run versus a long pass," says Smith. "Especially late. Eleven guys are out there on defense, sucking wind. On a long pass maybe only two or three get beat and get demoralized. On a long run you're deflating 11 guys. It's disheartening for a defense."

Smith and his teammates believe it's important to stick with the run even when the offense is struggling. In the October rematch with the Bears, Minnesota trailed 9-0 midway through the second quarter. Smith had been bottled up, and Culpepper had completed only 2 of 8 throws in the first four possessions. "I remember walking up and down the sideline, telling the guys, 'Let's go to work,' " Smith says. "We can be shut down for a long time, but the attitude we have is, no one's shutting us down for a game."

The next time Minnesota got the ball, at its own 28, the Bears crowded the line with the strong safety, the eighth man in the box, cheating toward the line. Culpepper stuck with the run, but to take the safety out of the play, he audibled so that Smith would run left instead of right. Wideouts Cris Carter and Randy Moss made good down-field blocks, and Smith coasted into the end zone after a 72-yard run.

By halftime Minnesota led 14-9. The final: Vikings 28, Bears 16.

Increasingly teams are turning to the run. On Oct. 22 the Chiefs got 96 of their 106 rushing yards in the fourth quarter of their upset of the Rams. On Sunday, St. Louis, following that lead, ran for 11 yards in the fourth period of a 34-24 win over the 49ers. When the Colts needed to thwart a Lions rally, they handed the ball to Edgerrin James, who piled up 89 fourth-quarter yards. In Tampa, Mike Alstott rushed for all but two of his 56 yards in the final period to close the Bucs' 41-13 rout of Minnesota.