The St. Louis Rams were only playing possum. If Sunday’s 40-29 domination of the Minnesota Vikings is any indication, the Rams remain the team to beat in NFC and the Vikings are the impostors.
“Hopefully, we’re back to the team we were last year when we were flying around, showing emotion,” said quarterback Kurt Warner.
“We could not stay with them,” Vikings coach Dennis Green said. “Good teams don’t lose too many games at home.”
Home remains the key to the NFC playoffs. At 11-3, the Vikings still have a one-game edge on the 10-4 New York Giants and a two-game edge on the 9-5 New Orleans Saints and Rams for home field. If the Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers at home next week, they will clinch home field.
“I think we’re the only team in the NFL undefeated at home,” Green said.
The Rams had lost three in a row at home, but Warner and running back Marshall Faulk weren’t healthy. After Sunday’s near-perfect performance, Warner and Faulk not only reminded the NFL the Rams are defending world champions, they forced a recount of league MVP ballots already promised to the Vikings’ Randy Moss, Robert Smith and Daunte Culpepper.
After four interceptions last week in his first game back from a broken pinkie, Warner broke the Vikings’ back with his usual pinpoint passing. He completed his first 11 passes on the way to a 17-0 lead that quickly turned this game into a rout. He finished with 27-of-32 for 346 yards and no interceptions against a leaky Vikings’ defense that did nothing to alleviate doubts about its ability to win a Super Bowl.
In his fourth game back from knee surgery, Faulk scored four touchdowns and ran for 135 yards in 25 carries. The Viking safeties were playing 18 yards from the line of scrimmage, inviting Faulk to run, and Warner to pick them apart underneath.
More impressive was the way the Rams’ maligned defense shut down the Vikings. Rams tight end Roland Williams had described the Vikings’ offense as “a poor man’s St. Louis Rams.” They weren’t even that good. Culpepper was sacked four times. Smith got only 67 yards in 15 carries. Moss and Cris Carter were held to 11 catches for a total of 129 yards and two touchdowns, not enough to keep up with the 16 catches for 246 yards by Warner’s wide receiver tandem, Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce.
Last week against Carolina, the Rams committed turnovers on seven consecutive possessions. Against Minnesota, they scored on seven consecutive possessions, not counting a halftime kneel-down.
The Vikings challenged briefly when they scored to start the second half and closed to 20-14, but the Rams quickly countered with a 79-yard, six-play drive, forced a punt and scored again. Both touchdowns were by Faulk.
“At 20-14, we were hoping to stop them and get into a rhythm,” Green said. “Here, on this type of surface, with this type of team at home, I think they have a little too much firepower for us.”
Said Faulk: “I felt good. The leg felt good. Everything felt good.”
Everything felt so good that the Rams revived their “Bob N Weave” end zone celebration, outlawed last season by the NFL Competition Committee co-chaired by Green. After Faulk’s first two touchdowns, he was joined in the end-zone dance by teammates who risk fines that Warner said he would pay.
Green and his committee had argued that such premeditated celebrations incited unnecessary bad blood. The Rams insisted they didn’t mean any disrespect, then promptly rubbed Green’s nose in it.
“It’s disappointing to me the NFL took that part of the game out because I don’t think we were demeaning to anybody,” Warner said. “We weren’t throwing it in anybody’s face. Hey, if I’ve got to pay a fine to get this team back to where we’re capable of playing and to get on a roll and get to the playoffs and get back to the Super Bowl, I’m happy to do that.”
Green said he had no reaction.
Faulk and Bruce said they were not trying to make a statement, but their 80-yard scoring drive to open the game–their first touchdown on an opening possession all season–spoke for itself. Rams’ safety Keith Lyle was more adamant: “This lets the league know we’re back. It puts a lot of doubt in people who were trying to write us off.”
Neither the Rams nor Vikings committed a turnover, so the score was an accurate reflection of the game.
“I don’t think they would have lost five games if Marshall Faulk had played every single game and Kurt Warner had played,” Green said. “I don’t think they would have lost at home.”
There’s not much love lost between the two teams. During last year’s 49-37 playoff win here by the Rams, Moss was fined $25,000 for squirting a water bottle from the sidelines at a game official. At the Pro Bowl, Carter told Rams defensive tackle D’Marco Farr he didn’t think the Rams were that great.
During last week’s practices, Rams coach Mike Martz put videotape of the playoff win on TVs throughout the Rams’ training facility.
“As long as we play smart football and disciplined football, we can have games like this,” Martz said.
Admitted Carter: “I don’t know why everyone seems surprised. They’re champs of the NFL, and that’s until someone knocks them out of the playoffs. It seems like everyone thought they were going to roll over. With the type of offense that they have … they hadn’t played that well in the last six or seven games, but they put it together today.”
