If the St. Louis Rams repeat their Super Bowl victory, they will point to Week 11 as pivotal. It was the week they were supposed to fade while last year’s runners-up, the Tennessee Titans, were supposed to stamp themselves as the new team to beat.
Instead, the Rams re-established themselves as the true defending champions, overcoming the absence of both Marshall Faulk and Kurt Warner to beat a good New York Giants team on the road.
The Titans, meanwhile, not only lost for the first time at Adelphia Coliseum, they were physically beaten up by the Baltimore Ravens, something that shouldn’t happen in anyone’s back yard.
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The Rams now return home with renewed confidence for three games in four weeks against playoff-caliber teams Washington, New Orleans and Minnesota. Last week the Rams lost to Carolina in St. Louis when Faulk joined Warner on the sidelines with an injury. Faulk expects to be back sooner than Warner. Both could be back at full strength by the December stretch run.
Said Warner after the 38-24 win over the Giants: “This is more the team we saw last year–a great football team.”
In Tennessee, the Titans barely tried to run sore-toed Eddie George against the Ravens’ No. 1-ranked run defense in a 24-23 loss.
“I think sometimes you need stuff like this for fuel,” said Titans tackle Brad Hopkins. “This is not a subtle reminder; it’s a sledgehammer.”
Titans tight end Frank Wycheck saw a silver lining: “These guys beat us late in the season last year and it brought us closer together, and I think this will too. I have no doubt this team will bounce back with greatness.”
The Titans were so disoriented by the loss that some defensive backs on the normally tight team were openly second-guessing coach Jeff Fisher for blitzing on a fourth-and-2 from the Tennessee 21 with 53 seconds left and the Titans leading 23-17. Baltimore quarterback Trent Dilfer lofted a floater to the goal line and drew an interference call against Titans cornerback Dainon Sydney that set up the winning score.
“We were defending against a touchdown–that’s what we should have been doing,” safety Blaine Bishop said. “The coaches didn’t put us in good position.”
But they weren’t defending only against a touchdown. A first down would have given the Ravens more legitimate shots at the end zone than they took on fourth down.
Better news for Tennessee was the three-sack performance of Jevon Kearse, who doubled his season total against Dilfer after Fisher had criticized his play.
“It made me mad,” Kearse said. “But now that I look back, I don’t think I was playing with a chip on my shoulder like I did last year and maybe I needed that. Last season I kept thinking I should have been picked earlier in the draft and I used that to get me going. Now I’m going to use what coach Fisher said as motivation.”
No surprise: Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre insisted he will play this Sunday against Indianapolis and Peyton Manning despite being practically ruled out by Packers coach Mike Sherman because of a sprained left foot.
“He’s optimistic and if he’s optimistic, I’m optimistic. It remains to be seen,” Sherman said.
Tests on Monday showed no serious damage to Favre’s left foot, which was hurt on a sack by Warren Sapp in the third quarter of Green Bay’s 20-15 loss at Tampa Bay. Favre limped off the field and didn’t return. He has a streak of 135 consecutive starts, an NFL record for quarterbacks.
Currently, Manning is second with 42 straight starts.
Unfair advantage: The Philadelphia Eagles won in Pittsburgh after capitalizing on their own penalty. Trailing 23-20 with 1:13 left, they tried an onside kick. They recovered it 1 yard short of the 10 yards required, so they were penalized 5 yards and tried again. They recovered legally this time, drove for the tying field goal and won in overtime. George Young, NFL vice president for operations and the former chairman of the rule-making competition committee, told the Associated Press: “It’s one of those things that’s not logical. You’re rewarding someone for doing something poorly.”
But Young says he’s not in favor of changing the rule because coaches would be reluctant to use it except in desperate situations if they lost the ball on a penalty. The Eagles surprised the Dallas Cowboys on the opening kickoff of their season opener in Dallas. Miami opened its game in Detroit a week ago by scoring on the first possession and following with an onside kick.
Ground Dolphin: In New Orleans, Mike Ditka wanted Ricky Williams instead of Lamar Smith. Ditka had been spoiled in Chicago by Walter Payton and Neal Anderson. In Miami, Dave Wannstedt happily took Smith. Wannstedt had been disappointed in Chicago by Rashaan Salaam and Raymont Harris.
Smith is on pace for 1,320 yards, which would break the Dolphins’ team record of 1,258 by Delvin Williams in 1978.
Miami was the only team to contact Smith after New Orleans released him in February.
“He’s a better player than I thought,” Wannstedt admitted.
Smith’s two touchdowns Sunday against the San Diego Chargers gave him 10 for the season, matching Indianapolis’ Edgerrin James and Washington’s Stephen Davis for the league lead. For the first time since Dan Marino’s rookie season of 1983, the Dolphins are running more than they pass. It might not look as glamorous, but the handoffs by journeyman quarterback Jay Fiedler are being cheered by fans of the 8-2 Dolphins.
The conservative approach has paid off with just 13 turnovers, none resulting in touchdowns. Last year Miami committed 34 turnovers, including nine returned for scores.
“When you’re able to run the ball, you don’t want to put yourself into positions where you have to force anything,” Fiedler said.
The one thing the Chargers were doing well was defending against the run. They were sixth in the league. The Dolphins gained only 84 yards on the ground against them, a measly 2 yards per carry, but they ran 41 times.
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Bad news for the Dolphins was the season-ending knee injury to Thurman Thomas, their veteran third-down back and team leader. A torn anterior cruciate ligament is liable to end the career of the former Buffalo star.
Dilfer pilfer: Except for the one admittedly stupid interception that nearly cost the Baltimore Ravens the game, revived quarterback Dilfer has obviously juiced coach Brian Billick’s offense after a five-game drought of zero touchdowns.
In Dilfer’s two starts, the Ravens have scored six touchdowns, five on passes by Dilfer. If Billick and Dilfer can manage to avoid the urge to call and throw dangerous passes at inappropriate times, the 7-4 Ravens will emerge as a playoff factor.
Dilfer’s 36-yard pass to tight end Shannon Sharpe on third down kept the winning touchdown drive alive Sunday against Tennessee. Dilfer said Sharpe’s “sense of timing when a quarterback is out of the pocket is like I’ve never seen.”
Sharpe caught seven passes in Dilfer’s first start and eight against the Titans.
“That’s because he’s Shannon Sharpe. It’s that simple sometimes,” Dilfer said.
“You get the ball to your best players as many times as you can. One consistency is that great players play great every single week, and the more they can touch the ball, the more you give it to them. I call it the Barry Sanders rule. They (Detroit) hardly lost when he had 20 touches or more.”
Around the league: The Bengals benched quarterback Akili Smith, who hasn’t thrown a touchdown pass in six games, and will replace him with Scott Mitchell. . . . Titans backup quarterback Neil O’Donnell has been hospitalized with a viral infection. . . . Rams running back Trung Canidate, the team’s first-round draft choice this year, is out for the year with a broken wrist.