The St. Louis Rams stick out so far in front of the NFL playoff pack that they are unbelievable. Maybe they are too good to be true.
In outscoring their opposition by 284 points, the Rams have stamped themselves among the best teams in history.
Since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, only 12 teams before the Rams outscored opponents by more than 200 points, a good measuring stick of dominance.
Of those dozen teams seven won Super Bowls, one lost a Super Bowl and four were knocked off earlier in the playoffs.
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By those odds the Rams should be the heavy favorites to win it all. Undefeated at home they have homefield advantage in the NFC. In their dome they have outscored teams by an average of 35-10.
They probably will have to beat the Minnesota Vikings and Tampa Bay Buccaneers to get to the Super Bowl. The Vikings don’t look like they can stop the Rams and the Bucs don’t look like they can score on them.
The 284-point margin of victory is the second highest of all time, behind only the 1942 Bears, who beat teams by 292 points.
The 284 points represents a more dominant season than the 1991 Washington Redskins (261), the 1985 Bears (258), the 1984 San Francisco 49ers (248) or the 1996 Green Bay Packers (246)–all Super Bowl winners.
It is more than the 1962 Packers (267), the most dominant of Vince Lombardi’s teams.
Yet somehow the Rams are not getting the kind of respect such lofty statistics warrant.
Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman, winner of three Super Bowls in the ’90s, knows good teams when he sees them. Says Aikman: “Probably more this year than in previous years, it appears to be anyone’s race. Clearly if you had to pick a favorite, you would have to say St. Louis. But once you get past them, you have a lot of teams that are pretty much lumped together. I say that thinking every one of these teams can compete with the Rams. I don’t think anyone looks at it and says this is definitely the team and if they don’t make it something is clearly wrong. People can have a lot of different opinions on who is going to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.”
Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher agrees with Aikman.
“If you look back the last 10 or 12 years at the trends in playoff teams,” Fisher said, “it seems like there was always a team–whether it was Dallas, San Francisco, Buffalo or Denver–somebody you look at and say, `I don’t know if anybody can get past this team.’ I don’t think that’s the case this year. That’s why we feel good about where we are. We feel like we’ve got as good a chance as anybody to take a step forward and go take it.”
The Rams have the MVP quarterback in Kurt Warner, whose passer rating of 109.2 put him farther ahead of his peers than any quarterback since Steve Young’s MVP season in 1994.
Marshall Faulk set an NFL record for rushing and receiving yardage. Kevin Carter led the league with 17 sacks and the Rams tied for the league lead in team sacks while leading the league against the rush.
In Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, and Az-Zahir Hakim, the Rams have the fastest three receivers in the league.
The undefeated Miami Dolphins of 1972 outscored opponents by 214 points. The Pittsburgh Steelers of 1975 outscored opponents by 211 points. The 49ers of 1994 outscored opponents by 209 points.
The Rams of 1999 dominated their schedule more impressively than any of those teams. Yet there is skepticism.
Maybe it’s because the Rams wound up beating zero teams with winning records, more the schedule’s fault than the Rams’ fault.
Maybe it’s because they lost their only two games against teams that ended up with non-losing records, the Titans and the Detroit Lions.
“Nobody is quite sure how good we are,” Warner says.
Maybe it’s because the Rams look too much like last year’s Minnesota Vikings, who set a scoring record and outscored their opposition by 260 points but lost the NFC title game. The 1942 Bears lost the championship game too.