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January 18, 2000
Rams take advantageof Vikings' generosityYou've got to hand it to the St. Louis Rams. When they get handed a game, they take it. It's only appropriate. This year's Rams are pretty much first-timers at this playoff deal. It was only polite for the Vikings -- NFC playoff participants in seven of the last eight seasons -- as guests at the Trans World Dome Sunday to bring the house-warming gifts. Touchdowns -- lots of them -- for the Rams. Gift-wrapped by the Vikings' defense. The Vikings should have won this game rather than losing it 49-37, and could have despite falling behind 14-3 in the first quarter. Looking at the statistics reveals several things. A victory isn't one of them. The Vikings had more first downs, more rushing yards, more passing yards, more total yards and won what was supposed to be the critical battle of the clock (34:11-25:49). The game was a bizarre irony. The Rams were supposed to be the better team on paper, the Vikings the better team on the field. As it turned out, the Vikings were the better team on paper, the Rams were the better team on the field. This game was decided on the field in the third quarter. And it has nothing to do with that kickoff return for a touchdown, which many of you are probably focusing on as the "turning point" of the game. I'm not a big believer in a single play being the "turning point" for any game. The 95-yard return by Tony Horne to start the second half didn't help, but, in and of itself, was not fatal. The Vikings were still in a close game, just as they needed to be. The third-quarter fumble by Moe Williams was also not fatal. But it did provide St. Louis with possession time. That Viking drive that never was could have been three plays and a punt, or it could have led to points. We'll never know. Here's what we do know. Between the the 13:27 mark of the third quarter and the 8:13 mark of the fourth quarter, the Vikings suffered a defensive collapse of catastrophic proportions. During that span of about 20 minutes, a close game -- a game the Vikings stood a good chance of winning -- became a Ram rout. The Rams scored 35 unanswered points in the second half to go from a 17-14 halftime deficit to a 49-17 lead midway through the fourth quarter. St. Louis scored four offensive touchdowns in that 20-minute onslaught. Those were four chances for the Vikings' defense to halt a St. Louis drive. They failed all four times. For that reason alone, the Vikings didn't deserve to win the game, and for that reason they didn't. If the Vikings had stopped the Rams on just two of those four drives, the outcome of the game would likely have been much different. Ultimately, this game was decided by two defensive stops. Two stops the Rams' defense made during that critical 20 minutes and the two stops the Vikings' defense didn't make. The Vikings needed to keep Kurt Warner and the Rams' offense off the field as much as possible. The Vikings won time of possession, but even this was, in the end, meaningless. Look it up in the dictionary. The Rams are now the definition for offensive maximization of possession time. Even in a scoring fest, the defense has to make some plays. The Rams made just enough, the Vikings made very few. This was the fatal flaw. Should we have been surprised that the Vikings' 30th-ranked passing defense surrendered 374 yards passing to Warner? Hardly. Consider this: the Rams didn't pass for as many yards as the Chicago Bears or the San Diego Chargers did during the regular season. The Vikings' defense was nonexistent, as it has been for much of the season. Not just the secondary, the defensive line, too. The Vikings needed to apply consistent pressure to Warner. Untested in a big game, Warner -- if Chris Doleman and John Randle had mounted anything more than a token pass rush -- would have been forcing balls into situations even the beleaguered Minnesota defensive backs could have capitalized upon. Warner had all day to throw. That's disastrous even for a good secondary. With the Vikings' sieve-like secondary, it resulted in completion after completion. In one stretch in the second half, Warner hit 12 of 13 passes, and the Rams got big play after big play, touchdown after touchdown. Even the Vikings' offense couldn't overcome that.
Column by Bob Varmette, Journal sports writer
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