WELCOME BACK
By Rams Nation's Rudy Hiers
Finally.
If you were to have been inside the Ed Jones dome on Sunday, you witnessed
it.
If you were to have been within earshot of the Ed Jones dome on Sunday, you
heard it.
If you were about to pull the sheets over their faces and pronounce the Rams
dead, you assumed it.
For the moment, shut out everything around you, sit quietly, stop and listen….
Hear that?
thump... thump…thump…thump…
It’s a faint pulse.
Finally, nearly nine months after they burnt red hot at the 2001 NFC championship,
the cold dead pile of ashes that once were the Rams hopes and dreams of 2002,
moved and stirred once again
The seemingly lifeless carcass of the Rams pride and honor, which just a week
ago was dragged unconscious through the grass and mud of Candlestick Park, awoke,
struggled to it’s feet, and just for a moment perhaps, reminded those
in the media and the league itself, that the heart is the toughest muscle to
destroy, especially the heart of a champion.
Beaten, broken, bloody and embarrassed, this group of men, the large majority
of them champions by name and deed, held a players only meeting the Monday following
the Oct 6th debacle by the bay, and although we do not know, nor ever will know,
exactly what was said during that meeting, the words however and by whomever,
seemed to provide enough spark and current, to defibrillate their weakened flesh,
and keep all the nay sayers from shutting off their life support.
My belief in life is that once you have fallen, one truly cannot begin to get
up until you’ve hit bottom. And I believe the Rams… This edition
of the Rams more specifically… did just that two weeks ago in San Francisco.
In an embarrassing loss that was as much a disappointment as any other loss
in Ram history, the Rams looked like they were on the verge of quitting on the
season, quitting on the fans, quitting on Mike Martz, and even more upsetting,
quitting on themselves.
They looked lost... Without soul or purpose.
In the days following the loss, dark clouds loomed over Earth City. The media
vultures circled, cackling and picking apart the unconscious form of the former
world and NFC champions that lay before them. “Martz has lost the team
they said” “It’s OVER” others cried. “How could
we have been so wrong about the Rams” they all muttered.
Bob Costas came to town, only to be walked out on by Marshall Faulk when it
appeared he wanted Faulk to point fingers at others. The Rams who only a short
seven months before were at the top of their game, and at the top of the NFL,
were now in disarray, and even more aggravatingly, the brunt of jokes and insulting
fodder across the nation.
With the team already reeling from the non-stop procession of injuries to key
players, things apparently got even worse last Friday when it was announced
that Jamie Martin, who had taken over for Kurt Warner when the 2 time NFL MVP
went down with a broken bone in his hand, was he himself not going to be able
to go against the Raiders because of a knee injury suffered against the 49ers.
The Rams now, in the midst of all their problems, were now down to their third
string QB, a QB that had never taken a snap in a regular season game, let alone
start one.
At 6’ 3” 215 lbs Marc Bulger “looks” like the prototypical
NFL signal caller, heck, he even hails from that noted birthplace of QB’s
Pennsylvania, but as we all know, size and arm strength alone does not equal
success in the NFL ( Hey… didn’t you used to be Jeff George and
Ryan Leaf? ) And even as out-of-sync as it’s been, the offense he was
about to captain, was not some single wing, student body left-student body right,
3 page playbook throwback. This was “Air”mageddon…. “Martz
Madness” A record setting offense that had not just set records over the
past three years, but obliterated them. While some playbooks are like cliff
notes, there are more pages to Martz’s playbook, then a library full of
Tolstoy.
Had Bulger ever taken a snap with the first stringers in practice?
Had Bulger even gotten past the prologue to Martz’s playbook?
Things were definitely bleak.
As this long time Ram fan sat there at the Ed last Sunday, having made his
yearly trip east from Southern California to cheer on the franchise he grew
up with, I made it a point to concentrate on watching the players in warm-up’s
and on the sidelines before the game. I did this because I felt their interaction
and mannerisms between one another would give the best indication of all, whether
or not the assumptions that may have been drawn from the San Francisco defeat,
were indeed, actually true.
What I saw, what I witnessed, not only answered the heavy doubts creeping
about this roster and it’s coach, but once again proved to me, that while
I may not be wealthy in terms of worldly possessions, my love for this franchise
makes me the richest man in the world.
I witnessed 52 men, their coaches, and a city, rally behind one another, lift
each other, and drag each other up off the floor.
I witnessed multi-generations of Ram fans… From the people who could
tell you what type of cologne Bob Waterfield wore, to the ones who first discovered
the Rams the day the moving vans showed up, slap hands, hug, and bond.
I witnessed a team that had it’s manhood, it’s very fortitude,
assailed and attacked non-stop since the last seconds of the Super Bowl last
February, reach deep within itself, and show what a champions heart is.
Sure, it’s only 1 victory, and that in theory it basically means they’re
simply 1-5 instead of 0-6, but I think it’s going to end up meaning much
more as the season progresses, not in a won-loss sense, but in a human sense,
for as it has been said, through adversity comes strength, and the Rams showed
that even with the issues that had seemingly enveloped the entire team, issues
that had it on the verge of collapse, they had enough character and fortitude
to get up off the deck and answer those who would threaten the respect and honor
they had earned the previous three seasons together.
This edition of the Rams may have won a Super Bowl in 1999, and another NFC
championship in 2001, but I feel that Oct 11th 2002 will be remembered as the
day these 52 men finally became a team.
Questions and Comments
thound1@yahoo.com