Columnist Dean Juipe: Rams lose, yet story won’t suffer

Dean Juipe

Monday, Nov. 1, 1999 | 9:43 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

The rough draft was in the works and if everything went as fancifully scheduled, within two or three months the St. Louis Rams would have their storybook season.

Linked by the common thread of the unexpectedness of their success, there would be chapters on a quarterback rising from total obscurity to challenge for the Most Valuable Player award, on a 62-year-old coach who hasn't had a winning season in 18 years and on a group of guys who came together after a decade of losing to inspire the league's many fans and emerge as one of the most entertaining underdogs of the century. And then the Rams played the Tennessee Titans, and now a little revision is necessary.

Plagued by a rash of turnovers and penalties in the first half Sunday, the Rams saw their prospects for a perfect season destroyed in a 24-21 nail biter of a loss to the Titans in a game that had some observers speculating it was a preview of the Super Bowl.

Both teams are now 6-1, and, as is customary by this time of the season, the NFL no longer has an unbeaten team. Had the Rams won this one -- and it suddenly appeared they might right at the end -- visions of going 16-0 were dancing through their heads. Their remaining schedule poses very few serious threats.

Their earlier schedule was just as soft, befitting a team that went 4-12 a season ago. Based on the 1998 win-loss records of their 1999 opponents, St. Louis has the 29th easiest schedule in the league. Yet there was no begrudging whatever trivial break the Rams could capture, especially after they lost $16.5 million quarterback Trent Green in the preseason and replaced him with $254,000 Arena league refugee Kurt Warner.

Warner, who started only one season in college (at Northern Iowa) and spent three in the Arena league and one in NFL Europe, is an engaging man accustomed to adversity. Aside from his professional pratfalls he has had the misfortune of having his wife's parents killed in a tornado and is the father of a boy who is now 10 who was blinded as a baby. He's easy to like and appreciate, and his achievements and statistics only add to his persona. He may yet win the MVP award.

And the Rams may yet become the Super Bowl champions, albeit without threatening the 1972 Miami Dolphins' status as the league's last perfect (17-0) team. Too many mistakes in falling three touchdowns behind the Titans erased St. Louis' shot at history.

Fumbles, penalties, even a couple of mistakes by referee Bob McElwee's crew contributed to a deficit that was a little too substantial to overcome despite the Rams' best second-half efforts. But they showed some character in taking the game to the wire.

It was the Rams' first game of the season on grass and the first where they faced a crowd so hostile and rowdy that St. Louis players wore experimental electronic earplugs that highlighted Warner's voice while filtering out extraneous noise. Maybe the gimmick didn't work but credit coach Dick Vermeil, who came out of a 15-year retirement in 1997 and whose last winning team was the 1981 Philadelphia Eagles, with having the moxie to try something different and for making the Rams the season's most pleasant surprise.

The loss on a missed field goal as time virtually expired interrupted the St. Louis storyline, but maybe it won't completely damage the script. Even in defeat the Rams were resilient and startling.