RamView, December 17, 2006
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #14: Rams 20, Raiders 0

Winning the turnover battle decisively and perhaps irked that they were
actually favored to lose to a team as laughably bad as Oakland, the
Rams record their first road shutout since 2001. I would call the loss
embarrassing for the Raiders, but I doubt they can be embarrassed much
more than they already are.

Position by position:
* QB: Lucky for Marc Bulger (11-22-137, 69.7) Pro Bowl balloting was
already complete; today would have sunk any chance he had. The Rams
3-and-outed to begin and end the 1st half, sandwiching two drives which
ended in FGs after the Rams bogged down in the red zone. Bulger set the
2nd FG up with a nice 41-yard bomb to Isaac Bruce. But that was almost
1/3 of his yardage for the day, as Marc struggled mightily to find open
receivers. The Rams bogged down again at midfield right after halftime,
but Oakland kept them alive by muffing the punt. Bulger then set up
Steven Jackson's first TD with a 14-yard strike to Torry Holt. The
rest of the second half, in which Bulger was 5-11-53, was some of the
worst offense we've seen by a St. Louis Rams team. Failing to get
anything going downfield, the Rams had a three-incompletion 3-and-out
followed by two more three-and-outs that ended in sacks. After Jackson
cashed in a Raider INT with a TD run, the Rams 3-and-outed again, but
Matt Turk took off and ran on 4th down instead of punting to extend the
drive. From there, heavy doses of Jackson and a 21-yard completion to
Holt ate 5-plus minutes off the clock and put the Raiders away. The key
to Bulger's performance today was that he committed no turnovers;
other than that, the Rams won despite getting next to nothing out of
their passing game.

* RB: Steven Jackson was a workhorse to end all workhorses, grinding
out 127 yards and 2 TDs on 31 caries, without catching any passes. He
had the big play of the Rams' first FG drive, bouncing off a big
pile-up, breaking two tackles behind the line and taking the play
outside for 19 yards. Steven loosened up the Raiders right before the
big bomb to Isaac Bruce with a similar 11-yard run, bouncing off a
middle blitz and running outside. In the 3rd, he trotted in easily for
a 4-yard TD behind good left-side blocking, and he used that again
after Ron Bartell's INT in the 4th, surging through a left-side gap
and out-accelerating any Raider even thinking about catching him for a
19-yard TD. Those were the highlights, but those were just the lyrics
for a background track of heavy-metal power-running right up the
middle, with Steven taking hits, breaking tackles, gaining yards after
contact all game long. To abuse the workhorse metaphor, Jackson's
playing like a Clydesdale that's also fast enough to win the Kentucky
Derby. Try stopping that.

* WR: Nnamdi Asomugha's name is Igbo for "Jesus lives", though it could
also mean "Torry Holt's jockstrap", as often as Nnamdi was in it today.
Holt had just 4 catches for 59 yards and had two TD passes denied him
by good plays by Asomugha. Isaac Bruce (3-58) was the ONLY other Ram
wideout to catch a pass, and he had the big play of the game, a 41-yard
bomb that set up a 2nd-quarter FG. Fabian Washington was step-for-step
with Isaac the whole route, but Bulger's throw was wisely inside
while Washington was on Bruce's outside shoulder, and Isaac outjumped
him for the ball. Highlights were scarce today, as the passing game was
rendered all but useless by the Rams' success running and forcing
turnovers, coupled with frequent failure to get anyone open the times
the Rams did have to throw.

* Offensive line: Adam Timmerman missed his first game today after
playing in 184 straight. Adam won't make the Hall of Fame, maybe not
even the team's Ring of Honor, but he's earned top billing here to
salute a long career of skill and physical toughness, and for his role
as a cornerstone of a Rams championship team. The "line of the
future" held up fairly well, despite some errors of inexperience.
Kirk Morrison blitzed right up the middle untouched for a sack to kill
the Rams' opening drive, a mistake Jim Hanifan credited to Richie
Incognito, playing RG, for blocking in the wrong direction. RT Alex
Barron and Joe Klopfenstein false-started the next drive, but it ended
in a FG, as did the next drive, even though Kevin Huntley smoked Klop
and LT Todd Steussie to drop Bulger for a big 3rd-down loss.
Huntley's face mask penalty, however, kept the drive alive.
Jackson's 1st TD was an easy stroll behind a big block from Steussie,
and his 19-yard TD in the 4th was even easier thanks to pancake blocks
from Steussie and Klopfenstein. In between those TDs, though, two more
Raider sacks ended drives, with Derrick Burgess beating Barron fairly
easily for one and Warren Sapp beating LG Mark Setterstrom for the
other. The four sacks and 4.0 RB rushing average gives the Ram o-line a
draw at best today, but Bulger did have good protection on quite a few
throws, Raider blitzes were picked up well and I didn't see any
foul-ups from Brett Romberg at center. Even if the future isn't that
far away, the Rams may not be too bad off.

* Defensive line/LB: A DT finally showed up for the Rams today, and
that was LaRoi Glover, who apparently doesn't like the Raiders very
much. Glover had easily his best game of the season. He rushed an Aaron
Brooks pass on Oakland's opening possession with good pressure,
leading to an INT, and sacked Brooks at the Ram 44 to end the next
drive. That sack was a gigantic play; a Ram DB slipped and fell right
after the snap, giving a Raider WR a free run to the end zone. Brooks
never saw him. After going up 3-0 in the 2nd, the Rams stopped Oakland
again thanks to a crafty blitz by Raonall Smith. The Raiders had just
crossed midfield again, but on 3rd-and-4, Smith hid in the weeds and
then burst through a gap to get to Brooks untouched for a big sack. The
Rams blitzed the Raiders into a 3-and-out before halftime, and kept the
pressure up in the 3rd. Claude Wroten stuffed a Zack Crockett run,
helping Leonard Little force a fumble. Oakland got as far as the Ram 31
the next drive, but Little got Brooks for his first sack, after which
the Rams got away with terrible pass coverage and a soft 4-man rush on
4th down. Brooks beat the Rams with one scramble but they kept him from
hurting them with rollouts as he has done so often in the pass. In
fact, Brooks (11-19-98, 49.9) was so ineffective, Art Shell replaced
him with Andrew Walter, who fared even worse (14-20-141, 48.1). On his
first drive, Walter held the ball on one play longer than it took me to
find a parking space at the mall this weekend, giving Little plenty of
time to overcome being steered outside to burst back inside for his
second sack. The next drive wasn't Brandon Chillar's highlight
reel: he tried to tackle Ronald Curry without using his arms on one
play and committed a bad DPI a couple of plays later, but Dexter
Coakley intercepted a Johnnie Morant bobble to effectively stick a fork
in the Raiders. Coakley had a good game, with six tackles, and if
you're wondering where this week's opposing 100-yard rusher went,
don't; there wasn't one. Justin Fargas gained just 43 yards on 12
carries and the Raiders ran for only 57 as a team. As in the team's
better days, the Rams stopped the running game by forcing turnovers and
getting out to a sizable lead, turning the Raiders into a
one-dimensional passing offense, and a bad one at that. The Ram front
seven didn't make a lot of big plays, but they were solid, which they
frankly should have been given the level of their competition.

* Secondary: Turnovers were the key to the game, and the Ram
secondary's opportunistic play was a necessity, because they didn't
look that good at covering Oakland's receiving corps, even without
Randy Moss. Fakhir Brown started things on the right track, though,
with a nice diving INT of a stupid Brooks pass on the game's opening
possession. After getting embarrassed by Justin Fargas on a 10-yard run
in the 1st, Corey Chavous got revenge by blitzing him for a loss on
2nd-and-3 to help kill Oakland's next drive. Chavous had nine tackles
and had a strong day in run support. With the Raiders in the red zone
in the 3rd, Tye Hill recovered Leonard Little's strip of Zack
Crockett. Ronald Curry (9-87) was a lot more effective than I thought
he should have been, though. The Rams played their zone defenses way
too loose, with an annoying tendency to leave the first-down line
between themselves and their receiver. This was glaring on a crucial
4th-and-5 late in the 3rd. Curry was wide open at the sideline, with
two Rams laying off him behind the first down line, but Brooks missed
him badly. That brought in Walter, who promptly threw Ron Bartell's
first career INT. Nice catch and nice safety play there by Bartell,
setting up a TD. Dexter Coakley picked off a pass the next drive, and
that was pretty much all she wrote. Like last week, the Ram DBs
didn't really allow anything deep, but I'm ready for tighter
coverage nearer the line of scrimmage, less "bend" to the
bend-but-don't-break philosophy.

* Special teams: It was a pretty wild day on special teams, especially
for Matt Turk, who saved the Rams' bacon (mutton?) a couple of times.
He unloaded a 74-yard punt late in the first half to get the Rams out
of a hole. In the 3rd, he had a 55-yarder taken off the board because
Isaiah Kacyvenski lined up wrong. On the retry, Brandon Chillar whiffed
pathetically on Jarrod Cooper, who steamed in for the block, but Turk,
who has never had a punt blocked, foiled him by dropping the ball
instead of attempting the kick. And since such a play is a rare
occurrence for Turk, it's hard to fault him for picking up the ball and
trying to run with it instead of getting off a quick punt. Raonall
Smith was flagged for the punt team's 2nd straight illegal formation on
the play anyway. Turk hilariously took off again, on his own, in the
4th for 16 yards and a first down. Quite an eventful day for a punter.
Kickoff coverage was wildly inconsistent, and Chris Carr was helped
immeasurably on returns by ridiculously short kicks that came down
around the 15-yard line. Why the hell aren't the Rams kicking DEEP?
Punt coverage scored a big play, though, when Carr muffed one away in
the 3rd, and how awesome is it that the loose ball was recovered by the
long snapper, Chris Massey? What's the last time a punter or a long
snapper earned a game ball? They sure did today.

* Coaching/discipline: Though the Raiders are a dreadfully awful team,
let's give the Rams a little credit for starters. Scott Linehan's
team is still playing hard, and won a game today they were
"supposed" to win. Doing it on the road and with a short week
speaks well to the Rams' level of preparation, as does the good start
the defense got off to. Jim Haslett blitzed the Raiders mercilessly,
which was responsible for a lot of Oakland's turnovers,
incompletions, sacks and rushes for loss. And if Haslett has gotten one
thing right this year, it's been that he has neutralized some
dangerous rollout passers. The one call I largely question was the soft
zone coverage and soft 4-man rush when Oakland went for it on 4th down
in the 3rd. If Aaron Brooks didn't suck, that would have been a
routine first down. But even with the opponent's low skill level, the
Rams deserve credit for throwing a shutout and for their season-best
day against the run.
You are not having a good day, though, when you commit more penalties
than the Oakland freaking Raiders, and Linehan needs to make reducing
penalties a top priority heading into next season. The penalties the
Rams are taking are primarily dumb and are a hallmark of subpar
coaching. Kennedy offsides on the opening drive, Klopfenstein
false-starting in the 1st two plays after Barron did, Holt offsides in
the 3rd two plays after a Bruce false start, Kacyvenski and R.Smith
drawing illegal formation penalties on back-to-back punts, Wroten and
R.Smith offsides on the last drive of the game... this team still has a
problem getting focused, and Linehan has to get it straightened out.
The game plan was extremely conservative, more running than passing,
and I'll be darned if there weren't a couple of passes called that
also should have been runs. In the 2nd, they got inside the 5 and then
passed on 2nd and 3rd downs. Yuk. They settled for a second FG after a
3rd-and-10 screen pass to Stephen Davis from the Raider 17. Yuk. Just
across midfield in the 3rd, on 3rd-and-1, a throw for Curtis? Double
yuk. And to then punt on 4th-and-1, when your defense has legitimately
been effective today? Triple yuk. Good thing for Linehan that Carr
muffed that fraidy-cat punt. Jackson's first TD was a nice call, a
run off a play-action pass, but then up 13-0, Greg Olson got
pass-happy, throwing 7 of the next 9 plays instead of keeping the clock
moving with rushes. Septuple yuk. So while we're all happy the Rams
won, and acknowledge what they did right, there is still a lot to clean
up here for this team to continue winning games.

* Upon further review: One of the big surprises of the day was that
Tony Corrente, a Bay Area native who's butchered plenty of calls
against the Rams in San Francisco in the past, doesn't extend that
charity across the Bay Bridge. Isaac Bruce should have gotten an OPI
late in the first; that wasn't incidental contact in the end zone; he
shoved Fabian Washington to the ground, which may have prevented an
INT. I was very afraid Dane Looker would be flagged for interference on
Chris Carr's muffed punt; it must have been ruled he was still engaged
by the blocker. In addition, a cheesy taunting call against Courtney
Anderson in the 3rd stopped a promising Raider drive. Anderson got that
call primarily for wearing silver and black. Didn't care for Corrente
laughing during the offsides call on Torry Holt, but they called DPI
well, and showed good teamwork catching Kevin Huntley face masking
Bulger in the 2nd. Today's game was called competently enough to bump
Corrente off the bottom of the NFL's officiating barrel, which welcomes
Jeff Triplette.

* Cheers: Another surprise was that Fox used four people to announce
today's game. Maybe someday they'll hire a couple who can tell Torry
Holt from Isaac Bruce, huh? Lead announcer Matt Vasgersian did refer to
Bruce as a future Hall-of-Famer, though, so he scored some points. With
Justin Fargas playing, I sadly neglected to keep track of the Huggy
Bear Index on the TV broadcast. On radio, Steve Savard didn't mention
Huggy Bear until the 2nd quarter, which could be a record for any
account of a Justin Fargas game. Savard got the quarter the game was in
wrong a couple of times, and Jim Hanifan, who can still see more going
on in the trenches than I ever will, insisted Turk's fake punt was
called from the sidelines, but those are subtle mistakes compared to
the ridiculous play-calling I've heard elsewhere this week. In the
Carolina game, Dick Enberg called a pass to "Keyshawn Foster"
incomplete, when it was actually a complete pass to Drew Carter. Then
there's TV's worst play-by-play man, Bryant Gumbel, who identified the
49ers' star RB as "Al Gore" at least three times Thursday night. And,
please, Dick Vermeil, get well soon. Marshall Faulk was filling in
capably for the ailing DV Saturday night, but then some brilliant
producer had to send Peon Deion to the booth, apparently to shout
Marshall down and analyze plays poorly. NFL Network's learning quickly,
I hope, that putting on a game isn't as easy as it may look.

* Who's next?: The NFL didn't exactly show a lot of holiday spirit by
scheduling the Rams to host the Redskins this Christmas Eve. Though
Washington is just 5-9 this season, they're also a team the Rams almost
never beat. The Rams are 1-5 against the Redskins since moving to St.
Louis. Washington has won all four meetings in the Dome, and are on a
seven-game winning streak right here in River City, where they haven't
lost since 1984. The opposing coaches in that 26-24 Big Dead win? Jim
Hanifan and... Joe Gibbs.

The Redskins lost Clinton Portis for the season five weeks ago, but
unfortunately, you can tell hardly any difference from their running
game. Ladell Betts has broken the 100-yard mark four straight weeks and
is averaging over 5 yards a carry this month. The Skins are 5th in the
league in rushing yards, helped in no small part by a solid
run-blocking offensive line, where, for my money, Randy Thomas is the
best run-blocking guard in football. The Redskin running game will also
have fans wincing back to last year, when Portis not only gashed them
for 136, the immortal Rock Cartwright (Betts was injured) burned them
for 118 on just 9 carries. With luck, the Rams will only see Rock
returning kickoffs Sunday. Jim Haslett probably won't blitz Jason
Campbell a lot; his secondary will have its hands full with a ton of WR
speed in Santana Moss and Antwaan Randle-El, and with those two, you
absolutely positively have to be on the lookout for end-arounds and
gadget plays. The Skins distribute the ball very evenly, so the Rams
also have to watch for Betts out of the backfield, and for TE Chris
Cooley, who has broken off some long plays lately. The Rams have to
hope to force Campbell into making mistakes while somehow keeping the
clamps on Betts, but the Redskins don't give up a lot of sacks, so
it's a tough task.

The defensive book on the Redskins had been to run on them, and that
they're weak at CB. Then today, they go and beat the Saints in New
Orleans, allowing just 71 yards rushing and getting big plays from CBs
Carlos Rogers and Shawn Springs. That secondary still has only 6 INTs
this season, though, which equals the number of picks Rogers has
reportedly dropped. The Skins also have only 17 sacks this season, led
by LDE Andre Carter with 4. Carter also had a big game in the Big Easy;
Alex Barron has to at least fight him to a draw for the Rams to be
effective against a defense that has had trouble stopping the run (20th
in the league, 124+ a game) and forcing mistakes. And that'll mean
getting Jackson rolling. Both teams have favorable matchups on paper in
the passing game, but these are both run-first teams and don't figure
to stray far from their root philosophy. Old fashioned,
ground-and-pound football. Sadly, the Rams likely won't have Adam
Archuleta to pick on, as the most overpaid safety in NFL history has
been demoted to most overpaid special teams player in NFL history.
They'll have to run over other people to win Sunday.

Does pulling off the upset in New Orleans mean the Redskins are
getting their act together, or are they headed for a letdown? Will this
week's win give the Rams new confidence, or a false sense of security?
Washington proved the "any given Sunday" adage last week by playing
with fire and motivation, especially on defense. If the Rams don't take
that lesson to heart, they are very likely to suffer the same fate as
the Saints. If they take that lesson to heart, and play with heart,
they could very well take a step closer to .500.