They sacked him, stomped him, stripped him, sassed him.
Then the Bears stood over him and talked trash to him. Talked some real mean trash.
”I thought the Bears came in there with a couple of late hits and they were saying a few things to me. I tried not to pay too much attention to what they were saying,” said Los Angeles Rams` quarterback Dieter Brock, who completed only 10 of 31 passes for 66 yards Sunday in a humbling 24-0 loss to the Bears in the National Football Conference championship game at Soldier Field.
”I just came in there in the first quarter after Brock handed the ball off and threw him to the ground,” said Bear defensive tackle William Perry.
”He said something to me and I said: `Hey, man, it was just a regular play. It`s just part of the game. You`re gonna get knocked down.`
”If he got rattled for what he thought was some late hits, he just got rattled. Our quarterback (Jim McMahon) probably got some late hits, too. That`s just the facts of the game. We just played good Bears football–you know, hit `em and wrap `em up.”
The Bears` defense succeeded in frustrating the entire Ram offense, which wound up with only 130 total yards. The Bears also became the first team in National Football League history to record consecutive shutouts in the playoffs.
”I knew we had `em in the third quarter,” said linebacker Otis Wilson, who stayed in Brock`s face all afternoon. ”We kept pounding it on them, pounding it, pounding it . . . three plays and then punt. I knew sooner or later Brock would get frustrated.
”Then when Mother Nature came in there in the fourth quarter and it started snowing, that freaked them boys from Los Angeles out. Mother Nature came in there and made some of Dieter`s passes more wobbly and harder to catch.
”After a while, we could hear the Rams talking to themselves. They were asking each other what the problem was and they couldn`t figure us out. I like to get the other team talking to themselves.
”We knew that if we shut Eric Dickerson`s running game down (46 yards on 17 carries), we could force Dieter to throw the football. And that`s something Dieter doesn`t want to do. He`s not a drop-back passer and he can`t kill you like that. They beat you by having Eric running at you because he`s such a great running back.
”Last night when we went over our defensive plan, Buddy (defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan) said, `With the defensive plan we`ve got, it`s so good that I`m scared.` He said the same thing last week about the Giants. And look what happened then. We shut them down, too. We can`t have a perfect record this year, but ain`t nothin` wrong with 18-1, now is there?”
”We really couldn`t get anything going offensively,” said Brock, who completed only 5 of 16 passes for 35 yards in the first half. In the closing minutes of the game he was sacked and fumbled, and Wilber Marshall ran 52 yards for a touchdown.
”I think the wind was a big factor when I tried to pass, especially against that pass rush,” said Brock. ”When the wind was swirling and gusting, I would throw the ball and it would seem to be right there on target. Then the wind would take it. That happened a couple of times.
”But basically, the Bears just stomped us. They didn`t confuse us with anything we didn`t see in the films. They just did a good job on defense. I would have to say the Bears are the best defense I`ve faced all year and the best I`ve faced in my career.”
Brock was completing his first season in the NFL after 11 seasons in the Canadian Football League.
”It would have been nice if we could have made it to the Super Bowl,”
he said. ”I felt like I had a pretty good regular season. I didn`t get a chance to throw the ball as much as I thought I would. I thought I was pretty successful when I did get to throw.
”We wanted to throw some quick passes against the Bears coming in. We were really limiting our passing game, trying to keep it very simple. We didn`t go with three wide receivers in any nickel (five defensive back)
situations. Every now and then, we wanted to open it up and throw deep. We just couldn`t make any big plays. I was very conscious of getting rid of the ball, maybe a beat quicker than normal.”
Brock appeared to have completed a big pass midway through the second period with the Rams on their 34-yard line and the Bears ahead 10-0. But wide receiver Michael Young went out of bounds after colliding with defender Mike Richardson before re-entering the playing field to make an over-the-shoulder catch. He was dragged down inside the Bears` 20, but the pass was ruled incomplete.
”I think Young might have been pushed after he was more than five yards down the field, which is supposed to be illegal,” said Brock.
”What happened on that play,” said Young, ”is that we made initial contact about three yards downfield, like you normally do when you have a bump cornerback, and I started to go around Richardson. I started to go around him because I thought I had plenty of sideline, so I tried to outrun him.
”I don`t know if he pushed me with his shoulder or shoved me or what, but I got another bump and was knocked out of bounds. I knew I was out of bounds, but I figured I should keep on with my pattern, and the linesman would pick it up and call a penalty on him and say he chucked me illegally.
”It wasn`t to be, which was the story of the whole game. You could say it was the official`s fault, but the defensive back did a really good job of holding me up on the line and he might have just carried it a little too far. That`s his job, and he got away with it that time.
”It`s too bad to see Dieter go through what he`s going through because I think he`s the finest person I`ve ever met,” added Young. ”He`s taken the brunt of all the problems we`ve had on offense, and it`s not that. He has a great arm and he`s a great leader and everybody thinks the world of him.
”It`s just too bad he had to end the season like this. He`s getting up there in years (35 next month) and it would have been nice if he could have made it to the Super Bowl.”
Los Angeles coach John Robinson said his team`s early deficit put Brock in an untenable position.
”We determined not to put ourselves in a position where our quarterback had to throw every down,” said Robinson. ”But you saw what happened. I think our team can take a lesson from the Bears. They lost 23-0 last year in the NFC championship game to San Francisco, and now they`re in the Super Bowl.
”Dieter had the one great pass, and it didn`t count. You don`t get many chances like that. I thought Dieter played competitively until. . . . you just can`t stand back there and get the normal time you need against the Bears.”
