| | | | | | | |  Monday, October 8, 2001
Rams show their superiority
By Eric Dickerson
Special to ABC Sports Online
PONTIAC, Mich. -- The Detroit Lions were really no match for the St. Louis Rams Monday night.
|  | | Johnnie Morton caught four passes for Detroit, but the Lions looked listless on offense. |
Detroit looked flat to me, especially on offense. At times they showed signs of success, but followed it up with mistakes. The Rams' defense came to play. If you're the Lions, 35-0 on Monday Night Football is a total embarrassment, believe me. This game will be something they won't want to look at on film this week.
You could just tell the Rams are a superior team, and a better-coached team, for sure.
I was surprised the Rams threw the ball so much early. But like Mike Martz said, he saw something in the Lions' coverage that he thought he could take advantage of, and that's why they threw the ball so much.
The Rams don't have a conventional offense. They don't go by the norms of running the ball 15 times or scripting the first 20 plays. Martz may come out and throw the ball the first 20 times. It doesn't make a difference to him. He might come out and run the ball for the first 20 plays. Whatever is working is what Martz calls for on offense.
The Rams went three-and-out on their first possession, but once they figured out what they wanted to do, there was no way Detroit could stop them. In a game like this, you expect things like turnovers and dropped passes (Marshall Faulk fumbled for the first time in 503 carries and Isaac Bruce dropped two balls). I say this because when you're such a better football team than your opponent you have a tendency to underestimate them, and I'm sure the Rams will say they didn't, but in the beginning they did. Later in the game, though, they got it together and started playing good football.
If you asked Rams players to rate how they played on a scale of 1 to 10, I think most of the players would say around a 7. They have such a good football team and they try to reach excellence all the time. Tonight, they did just enough to win, and it turned out to be a blowout.
Back to the Lions, it's tough to pinpoint one problem. Some may say it's Ty Detmer, others may say it's Charlie Batch, but it's probably a combination. The West Coast offense is a very difficult offense, and you really have to know what you're doing to run it. I don't think the Lions have the full grasp of it.
The West Coast system is not for everybody. The Lions don't have the quarterback for it, and overall they just don't have the smarts to run it. You talk to guys who played in this offense like Joe Montana, Steve Young, and now Jeff Garcia, they'll tell you this is a difficult offense to learn and you have to play in it for a while and make mistakes.
Right now, the Detroit Lions are making a lot of mistakes.
Play of the game:
Dre' Bly's 93-yard interception return for a touchdown, no doubt was the turning point in this game. That was the backbreaker for Detroit. Nothing could go right for them after that.
Player of the game:
Kurt Warner. "KW" was 29-for-37 for 291 yards and three touchdowns. The numbers speak for themselves. He was sharp, putting passes right in his receivers' hands all night. He gets my game ball.
Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson is a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football and is a regular contributor to ABC Sports Online.
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Eric Dickerson talks with Kurt Warner following his 286-yard, 3-TD performance.