RamView, November 5, 2006
From Row HH
(Report and opinions from the game.)
Game #8: Chiefs 31, Rams 17

Closer than the usual Rams-Chiefs game, but no less dissatisfying, as
the Rams bury themselves under three early turnovers to lose for the
third straight week. Half a season in, I don't know what kind of team
we've got any more. They don't look ready to play, they've quit forcing
turnovers, they continue to get run over. If those things and the
offensive turnovers keep up, what we've got is a team that won't be
playing in January.

Position by position:
* QB: It was another spectacular day for Marc Bulger (31-42-354), but
it was marred by a big mistake in the 2nd quarter that helped bury the
Rams in a 14-0 hole. Knowing Jared Allen was bearing down on him, Marc
nonetheless failed to unload the ball, as he too often does, and this
time, he coughed it up for a turnover the Rams never really recovered
from. As also happens too often, Marc took a while to really get
rolling. The Rams were already down 17-0 in the 2nd before Marc
engineered a TD drive, which featured a couple of long passes to Isaac
Bruce, including a pinpoint sideline strike. Marc ran the no-huddle
offense reasonably well for over half the game, though it was much more
"mosey-up" than "hurry-up". He drilled a pass to Kevin Curtis
at the sideline on 3rd-and-1 late in the 2nd to set up a FG that pulled
the Rams within 24-10. Marc started an 80-yard TD drive in the 3rd by
hitting Torry Holt for 27, and firing a couple of bullets, to Holt for
6 on 4th-and-1 and to Curtis on the goal line to end the drive.
Remember when Marc never used to check down? Well, he may have
overcompensated today, hitting Steven Jackson 13 times. Bulger and
Jackson really kept the offense moving, though. Bulger got the Rams
into scoring range a couple of times in the 4th. The first time,
though, a poor OPI call on Bruce and two Alex Barron false starts
killed the drive out of FG range. The second time, now down 31-17,
Bulger got the Rams down to the KC 5 with a lot of dumpoffs and a smart
scramble, as the Chiefs had vacated the middle of the field, but he
went 0-for-4 from there, throwing a ball Jackson wasn't looking for
and forcing three passes into tight coverage which all fell incomplete,
essentially ending the game. Marc played very conservative football
today, and the statistics show it was effective, but he didn't play
mistake-free ball. That fumble was a killer.

* RB: Steven Jackson definitely got enough touches today, and some
eye-popping numbers: 32 touches, 13 receptions for 133 yards, 219 total
yards. The Chiefs didn't seem real interested in covering him out of
the backfield, and he took full advantage, serving further notice that
he has become an all-purpose back. Unfortunately, Steven also lost his
first fumble of the season in the 2nd to Jared Freaking Allen. That led
to a Chief FG, as they would gain 17 points off turnovers for the day.
But Steven was still damaging by air and by ground. He muscled in a
2-yard TD run for the Rams' first score. He kicked off a FG drive
with a 16-yard reception, one of 14 plays where he gained more than 5
yards. He set up the Rams' 2nd TD in the 3rd with a 22-yard run he
kicked outside nicely and used a solid downfield block by Torry Holt.
The next play, he gamely tried to leap about 10 feet for a TD, but was
stopped at the 2. With the Rams driving for a tying score early in the
4th, Steven dislocated a finger on a 10-yard gain, a more important
injury than anyone thought, because he missed most of the rest of the
drive, and it bogged down. He returned to add 20- and 13-yard catches,
but the Rams were down 31-17 by then, and he missed on a likely TD
catch from the 5 with 2:00 left, not realizing a pass was coming. That
aside, Steven Jackson is delivering just about everything Rams fans
hoped for. His effort is palpable, any dancing was limited to early in
the game, he was a rushing and receiving weapon, and today, he had a
Marshall Faulk-like game statistically. He's luckier than Bulger
since his fumble only led to 3 points, and we're left to worry a
little since he put the ball on the ground twice. But today's was one
of Steven Jackson's most dominating performances.

* WR: It's not asserted often enough, so I'll assert it again:
Torry Holt is the best WR in the league, and the Ram offense goes as he
goes. So what did the Rams do today? Not only did Holt not have a catch
while the Rams fell behind 24-7 in the first half - there wasn't even
a ball thrown his way. I iso'ed on Torry a lot, and in the first half,
Bulger rarely even looked for him. Holt had 3 catches for 50 yards in
the 2nd half, but talk about leaving your best weapon in the holster.
Isaac Bruce mirrored Holt - 3 for 61, all in the 1st half. He carried
the 1st TD drive with a nice sideline catch for 33 and a 23-yarder to
get the Rams in the red zone. Kevin Curtis (7-59) led the WRs in
receptions. He got inside the DB at the goal line for a tough sliding
TD catch to make it a 24-17 game and got annihilated by Sammy Knight on
the last play of the game. I'm impressed he's still alive after that
shot. The Rams spent the second half in no-huddle, which got a ton of
catches for Jackson, but also seemed to confuse the heck out of Joe
Klopfenstein; at least, it looked like Bulger had a lot of difficulty
getting the play explained to Klop's side of the field, which I think
slowed down the no-huddle offense a lot. Klop's a rookie, but we're
halfway into the season, too.

* Offensive line: This past month, Alex Barron has gone into a
sophomore slump that has me wondering if it wouldn't be better to go
with Todd Steussie and Adam Goldberg on the right side for a few weeks.
Alex is like a spooked horse right now, flinching any time somebody
throws out a blitz look. With the Rams in KC territory in the 4th, down
only a TD, Alex killed the drive with back-to-back false starts. Adam
Timmerman and Orlando Pace added false starts, and the Rams let Jared
Allen beat them yet again. Allen killed the Rams' opening drive with
a sack. Barron may have blocked the wrong man, because Allen came up
inside of him and on the outside, Joe Klopfenstein had no one to block.
Allen's second sack was critical, as he got a direct line to Bulger
for a sack/fumble in the 2nd that set up a Chief TD. Bulger held the
ball way too long there, but I also can't explain why the line just
let Allen go. If you're a lineman, why would you ever quit blocking
on a play? The good news: there were just the two sacks (helped by use
of a lot of no-huddle), and the ground game gained over 100 yards. But
the Rams have got to get Alex Barron right again, and the line has to
quit having mental breakdowns right when the offense needs to make a
big play.

* Defensive line/LB: Even though the Chiefs lost their starting LG with
a broken leg, even though they've lost great blockers this past
offseason like Willie Roaf and Tony Richardson, even though Kyle Turley
looks only slightly larger than Dante Hall, even though they ran twice
as often as they passed and should have been kind of predictable, they
steamrolled the Rams anyway, as Larry Johnson rumbled for 172 (116 in
the first half) and a TD. The Rams had KC pinned on their own two on
their first possession, but on 3rd-and-9 - third and freaking nine!
- LJ launched a 45-yard run. Brandon Chillar and Leonard Little got
pinned inside. Turley pancaked Jimmy Kennedy. OJ Atogwe, who had a
simply awful game, overpursued. Will Witherspoon, for reasons I cannot
explain, took on a blocker and let LJ run right by. And the Chiefs ran
away from a weakside blitz. Hard to imagine a play where more things go
wrong. The Chiefs turned that into a TD, via a muffed punt and 6
straight Johnson runs from inside the Ram 15. Kennedy was able to get
into the Chief backfield a couple of times for stops, but most of the
day was like Johnson's run in the 2nd, a 3rd-and-17 draw play where he
weaved through traffic for 16 and put KC back in FG position after a
Leonard Little sack had put them out of it. Little had both Ram sacks
today; interestingly, one from LDE, one from RDE, both against John
Welbourn. But there was no rush at all on Damon Huard's bomb to Samie
Parker that set up KC's 2nd TD, and little rush from Ram linemen not
numbered 91. There was too little of anything the last 2:00 before
halftime. LJ swept for 9 behind a block from Turley. (I've already
listed more blocks by Turley than he made his entire Ram career.) 15
more for LJ the next play, spinning neatly off Dexter Coakley and
running through a diving Kennedy effort. The rest of that drive was all
Tony Gonzalez and no Ram pass rush, including a Travis Fisher blitz
that failed miserably on a Gonzalez TD that put the Chiefs ahead 24-7.
The third quarter went much better, though. LaRoi Glover stuffed LJ.
Little got his second sack. Huard and Johnson blew an exchange, though
three Rams somehow managed not to corral the loose ball. This all
allowed the Rams to get back into the game, and with 10:00 left, the
Rams were within 24-17 and had the Chiefs pinned at their own 6. And
the Ram defense went pfffffft. 12 on a screen to Dante Hall. DPI on
Coakley for 17. 16 for Johnson, with Little way overshooting the
handoff and getting blocked by the fullback. Face mask on OJ for 5
more. 15 more for LJ on a well-executed play that Victor Adeyanju,
Coakley and Witherspoon all get blocked out of. An easy 3rd-and-3
completion to Gonzo is followed by a nifty Huard TD pass to Kris
Wilson, and far from keeping the Rams in the game, the defense has
instead allowed KC a 94-yard TD drive that didn't even take 4 minutes.
Game, set, match. Leonard Little said after the game that he didn't
feel the Rams were outschemed. And he's right. The Chiefs execute
their blocking masterfully, and just hit the Rams in the mouth all day.
As the last two weeks have made painfully clear, this defense is not
physically capable of stopping a power running game.

* Secondary: Damon Huard completed just ten passes for the Chiefs
today. So the Ram secondary had a good game, right? No, THREE of
Huard's completions were for TDs. Tony Gonzalez was uncovered on two of
those TDs. Uncovered! On a 3-yard TD completion in the 2nd, Gonzo was
all alone in the back of the end zone for the TD, with at least four
Rams passing up on covering him. Corey Chavous, worried about the
fullback, passed him off to OJ Atogwe, who was worried about a crossing
receiver. Somehow, nobody was worried about Gonzalez, even though it's
no secret at all he's a favorite target near the goal line. That TD was
set up by Samie Parker beating Fakhir Brown for 43. Yeah, not shutdown
corner work, that. Late in the first half, Gonzalez turned Will
Witherspoon inside out for an embarrassingly easy TD, a TD that never
should have happened, but Travis Fisher made THE WORST TACKLE OF ALL
TIME. Travis was sailing in untouched on a blitz. Huard never saw him
coming. And Travis whiffed on him! Missed him completely! Travis Fisher
is such a bad tackler he can't even hit a stationary target! That's
like a PGA pro whiffing on a tee shot. Well, in Fisher's case, a
Nationwide Tour pro, but you get the point. KC put the game away with a
late TD to third-string TE Kris Wilson, a well-designed play that
Atogwe seemed to figure out but brutally misplayed anyway. The Chiefs
threw 15 times, and still the Ram secondary managed to blow
assignments, play confused, get beat for big plays and tackle
miserably. Is Seattle's secondary coach available?

* Special teams: As much as special teams have improved, the game still
partially turned on a critical special teams mistake, as Dane Looker
muffed a punt return in the first to put KC in golden position for
their first TD. That seemed to end the Rams' oddball
punt-returner-by-committee practice, as Shaun McDonald fielded the rest
of the punts. Ram kick coverage has dramatically improved. Dante Hall
got nothing going on kicks or punts. Contrast that to the KC game in
2002. Looker even tackled Hall on a couple of kicks and downed a punt
at the 2. Dane has emerged as the leader of a pretty good special teams
unit, but the muffed punt is impossible to overlook and drowns out the
good plays.

* Coaching/discipline: Late for Halloween, the Rams still started this
game playing like zombies, the second straight week they've come out
flat for a game, which drives me nuts. Coaching 101 is motivation, and
if the Ram coaching staff can't have the team ready to answer the
opening bell, they're no good to anyone in Rams Nation. I hereby dub
the Rams' D the "Marmoset defense", a gross re-enactment of the
Larry Marmie era by Jim Haslett and company. There's little scheming
around the punishing running game the Chiefs put out there today, but
this defense still has a lot of correctible problems. They appeared
surprised by every pass play. It is mind-boggling how poorly they
covered Gonzalez when he's the first guy to look for on any KC pass.
The secondary had one breakdown after another. I'm not sure Atogwe
did anything right all day. Coakley is too doggone small to help this
defense, and Travis Fisher is too, well, Travis Fisher. The Rams just
had a bye week, a seemingly ideal time to make some lineup moves or
coach the youngsters like Atogwe and Tye Hill and Adeyanju up some
more. I hope Haslett enjoyed his fishing trip or whatever he was doing
instead. The Rams' recent play in no way resembles the play of a
well-coached defense.
Scott Linehan didn't distinguish himself today, either, as his
formerly high-flying coaching star has become more of a meteor lately.
Conservative playcalling is one thing, but a game plan that doesn't
even look for its star WR for the entire first half is as loony as any
goal line TE reverse Mike Martz ever called. Torry Holt has to get the
ball. Pretend he whines about it like T.O. does, Linehan, and act
accordingly. If Linehan had coached the 1991 Chicago Bulls, he would
have pounded the ball inside to Horace Grant 50 times a game. Michael
Who? The running game has gotten far too predictable. We shouldn't be
able to call out ¾ of the runs from the stands. And 13 dumpoffs to
Jackson, while successful plays, tell me that Linehan has gotten Bulger
too conservative. Get the ball downfield, coach! He was smart to go
no-huddle in the 2nd half, and smart to FINALLY get Holt involved.
Those two things had the Chief D severely on its heels, so much so that
Linehan should have gone for it on 4th-and-11 from the Chief 36 in the
4th. But he went with a pooch punt instead, which had its merits as far
as being a play for field position, but we saw how well it worked out.
KC was at the 35 two plays later and drove on 94 yards for a TD. At the
end of the game, down 2 TDs with :07 left, Linehan should have just
taken his booing like a man and run Jackson, but he has Bulger flinging
deep in an impossible situation instead. My concern was the Ram QB
would get injured in a futile gesture, but instead it was Kevin Curtis
paying a pretty stiff price trying to salve the coach's ego, getting
trainwrecked by Sammy Knight on a tackle made easier because Curtis had
run the identical route the previous play. I'm madder at Linehan for
that play than I am that Knight put something extra on it. Halfway
through the season, Scott Linehan suddenly has a lot to change to make
this season a successful one. It's on him to have the team better
prepared for games, to attack more aggressively on offense, and to do a
far better job protecting his players at the end of games.

* Upon further review: One controversial call sticks out in a game that
was called well otherwise by Mike Carey and crew. With the Rams driving
for a tie in the 4th, Bruce was called for an OPI which reversed a key
3rd-down completion at the Chief 24. What really happened was that Ty
Law was grabbing Ike's jersey downfield, and fell when he lost his grip
on him. The bad call killed the Rams' momentum and was a turning point
of the game. The Rams wound up not scoring, and KC went back up by 14
on the ensuing possession. Like several Ram players, one bad play
really tarnished the officials' performance today.

* Cheers: I've heard contrary reports, but the Chief fans I ran across
today were great, simply cheering on their team and not rubbing in the
Rams' bad plays. There could easily have been 10,000 KC fans present,
and it made for a great atmosphere. Noise was good early on from Ram
fans, and we drew a couple of false starts, but turnovers and bad
defense really took us out of the game, as often happens. Many Chief
fans had better Dome seats today than many of us Rams fans will ever
have a shot at. But before anybody rips Rams Nation for the number of
opposing fans "allowed" in today, how many Cub fans get into Busch
Stadium every time they come down here, when Cardinal fans are supposed
to be baseball's best? Hmm? Both teams' fans made strong showings
today, to the credit of each. The halftime show, which the Rams
continue to play on the cheap, was actually pretty cool, a Marine
silent drill team doing all kinds of cool rifle spins and tosses. The
Ram defense could certainly use some Marine toughness, or at least a
couple of those guns.

* Who's next?: Whatever the Seahawks do tonight against Oakland,
it'll be now-or-never for the Rams when they visit the dopily-spelled
Qwest Field next Sunday. If the Rams lose, they fall further behind
Seattle, with decisive disadvantages in the head-to-head and division
record tiebreakers. Let's face it; the jig would pretty much be up.
If the Rams win, they're tied for first or leading the division,
everything is even again, and it's a whole new season. And a win
would no doubt be a big psychological boost, as it would end a losing
streak that was started by Seattle.

Seattle won the first meeting in St. Louis by sacking Bulger six times
and pretty much shutting down Steven Jackson. Their defense has sagged
since then, though. They allowed 170+ rushing yards to the Vikings and
190+ to the Chiefs, and only got to Huard once in that loss. Those
stats won't matter much, though, if the Ram offensive line doesn't
play a lot better than it did October 15. I don't see how they can
trust Barron at RT next week. He'll false start ten times against the
Seahawks fans' wall of sound, and he was awful against Bryce Fisher
in St. Louis. It should help that Orlando Pace will have a clear head
for this game. KC and Minnesota have two of the league's top o-lines
though, so I wouldn't just expect Jackson to run for 150 or anything.
The Rams have to continue to be successful through the air. But this
time, Bulger has to be a lot smarter about getting rid of the ball, and
he HAS TO GET THE BALL TO TORRY HOLT. If the Rams continue to forget to
do that, they deserve to continue to lose.

The Rams successfully blitzed Matt Hasselbeck early in the first
meeting, then backed way off as the secondary broke down repeatedly,
including giving up a Darrell Jackson TD bomb despite TRIPLE coverage
and Travis Fisher failing to cover anyone in a green helmet. Fakhir
Brown was out the first game, which may help in the rematch, who knows?
With Shaun Alexander likely returning, and Matt Hasselbeck likely still
out with a sprained knee, it's the Ram defense's job to make Seneca
Wallace beat them. KC and Minnesota both picked off Wallace twice, and
the Rams don't have much of an excuse if they can't make big plays
against a mistake-prone QB. Though Wallace showed the scrambling
flashiness of a Michael Vick while at Iowa State, he's also prone to
holding the ball in the pocket way too long and taking big losses.
Seattle will make Alexander harder to stop by flooding the field with
receivers, but I think the Rams first have to make Wallace prove he can
hit them. And I think that has to be with plenty of blitzes, rather
than relying on a defensive line where Leonard Little is the only
viable rusher and Jimmy Kennedy plays like a lightweight against Kyle
Freaking Turley. Jim Haslett should do what he didn't do when Seattle
was here; stay with what works.

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body." Seneca
(the one who lived about two millennia before there was an NFL) said
that, and I can't think of a better quote to apply to what may be the
Rams' last chance for redemption this season. Before this season
becomes one Rams Nation just hopes lays a good foundation for 2007,
Scott Linehan needs to have this team ready to go to Seattle for a
fight. The antidote for a team that's been flat for two weeks is to
fire them up, and come out firing. That isn't coaching 201. The meek
check-offs and three-man pass rushes can wait for a week. I also
wouldn't mind hearing about a few tackling drills at Rams Park while
they're at it. Right now, this team needs to come out with high
aggression and high tempo, and let the rest work itself out. Strong
minds. Hard work. Win.