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Rams RB
Marshall Faulk
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Walk through the corridors of the Rams’ St. Louis compound, and from the walls the
franchise’s great players stare out at you from photographs, Waterfield and Hirsch
and Fears and Younger and all the others. A storied history, this one. Honor it.
I do. Now, in a different town and in a different time, there is another Rams team that
I suspect is going to be remembered as the equal of the Rams teams of the ’50s that
attracted throngs of 100,000 to the Los Angeles Coliseum and made pro football truly
national. Tremblingly, I give you the current Rams.
In them are the qualities of greatness.
A large statement. It is made without reservation after witnessing how this team
handled Minnesota 49-37 in an NFC divisional game. I was around, I might note, through all
the "Air Coryell" years in San Diego. What we’re seeing in Missouri is Air
Coryell Revisited, only faster, much faster. I take no delight in saying this, but
Coryell’s Chargers teams were like lead balloons compared to what Dick Vermeil’s
side can do overhead.
"Hopefully," Vermeil said after the Vikings had fallen, "we painted a
glowing picture that we really don’t have any weaknesses."
He would not go so far as to say his side is touched by greatness. "No, we’re
just a great team of this year," the coach said. "It’s not where it is
going to be down the road, but it is a very, very good football team."
Vermeil wouldn’t say it, but I will. The Rams have to be recognized as one of the
stellar teams of the Super Bowl years. Yes, the team’s schedule has been less than
testing, and, yes, these Rams were outscored by Philadelphia on the regular season’s
final weekend 38-31, but they had an excuse, as they say in horse racing. Their excuse was
that already having won 13 games, they were assured of being postseason participants and
had no focus, which can happen.
Greatness is in the eyes of the beholder. What is great to one is not to another. You
might dispute the point. But to me, the Rams of the first year of the new millennium have
to be regarded with the Green Bay Packers of the ’60s, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the
’70s, the San Francisco 49ers of the ’80s and the Denver Broncos of the two most
recent Super Bowls.
I’ll go further. I think the current Rams could be superior to those teams. They
simply play at another pace. Offensively and defensively, they possess speed beyond
compare. They also would seem to have no flaw.
When I get a notion like this, I like to run it past Sid Gillman, who, as the Los
Angeles Rams’ coach from 1955 to ’59, handled many of the franchise’s
redoubtables. Sir Sidney is 88, but his mind is keen and his passion for football burns as
brightly as ever. When I called last week, the La Costa, Calif., squire was peering at a
Chiefs-Raiders tape.
"Don’t ask me why," he said.
I knew why. Because it was football.
Gillman, of course, has been studying the Rams, whom he expects on Jan. 30 to have a
triangular-shaped silver trophy handed to them by Paul Tagliabue as the reward for being
champions of Super Bowl XXXIV.
"They’ve got it all," the Chargers’ patriarch judged of the Rams.
"Anything you want, they’ve got, including coaching. Dick Vermeil is doing a
great job. His passing game is remarkable, and the running back (Marshall Faulk) is doing
such a fabulous job."
Sir Sidney wouldn’t go so far as to value the current Rams as superior, say, to
the Rams team of 1950, which established 22 league records. "Probably not,"
Gillman said. "Those were great players."
On that, I would disagree. Nutritional advances and improved training methods have made
the football players of today more accomplished specimens than those who preceded them.
Vermeil recognizes as much.
"The modern athlete is like the car you drive: more sophisticated, bigger, faster,
more computerized, everything else they didn’t have in that time," Vermeil said.
"Not that they weren’t gifted athletes. All those guys you’ve mentioned
(Hirsch, Fears, Waterfield, etc.) probably could still play."
Vermeil remembered that when he had the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV in January
1981, he didn’t have an offensive lineman weighing more than 276 pounds. "Now we
don’t have a guy that small. Now they’re all 290-300, and they’re all
faster," the coach said.
A cynic could argue that no team quarterbacked, as the Rams are, by a guy blooded in
the Arena League should be equated with greatness. Nonsense. Have you watched Kurt Warner,
seen how swiftly he makes his reads and how accurate he is? He also is poised. He shares
many traits with Dan Fouts, Air Coryell’s aviator: courage, toughness and accuracy.
As Gillman was consulted, so was David Neft of New York, among football’s most
authoritative historians. Neft noted that the current Rams are more adept defensively than
were the Rams of the ’50s.
Historians, however, prefer to view matters in the context of a continuing diorama.
Neft conceded that the Rams do have the stuff of greatness in them.
"But you’re talking about a team that has played good football for one season
against a pretty easy schedule. The 49ers and the Falcons died; they were pretty
bad," Neft said of the Rams’ NFC West associates. "The competition within
the division was sparse. But the Rams certainly look like a team with some of the best
balance we’ve seen in a long time."
Editor's note: Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune
since 1961 and for PFW since its inception in 1967. |
