RamView, July 23, 2016
Legends of the Dome Game: White 56,
Blue 49
St. Louis Rams, 1995-2015. RIP. Thanks
for the memories.
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| Just a generic Dome again, as it was in 1995 |
So the occasion here is today's Legends
of the Dome game, a flag football game starring a couple of dozen former
St. Louis Rams players, and put together by Isaac Bruce, a man far
more decent than the league he played in, to raise money for his
charitable foundation and to give fans and players a chance to thank
each other for the good times. I came into this event completely
regarding it as a funeral, but Isaac and company pulled it off. It
was a fun event.
Position by position:
* QB: Let
me tell you, Marc Bulger (of the winning White team) can still wing
it. He threw an 80-yard TD to Torry Holt that he placed perfectly
between two deep defenders, and he dropped a perfect 35- or 40-yard
pass right in the bucket to Torry that turned into another long TD.
Also, by scrambling for a couple of gains, I believe he exceeded his
NFL career rushing total. Kurt Warner's game showed a little more,
um, maturity. His passes still have the classic Warner Wobble and I
think a number of the back-shoulder throws he made weren't meant to
be back-shoulder throws. Still, the first time he hit Isaac Bruce
deep down the sideline, it was 1999 again. Unfortunately, Kurt threw
the most near-picks and the game's only pick, in the end zone by Tony
Horne (!), and you'd have to call that the play that decided the
game. After three quarters, Brenda Warner (who was actually in
attendance) made Mike Martz pull Kurt out of the game (j/k), and the
final TD scored in the Dome by an NFL player was scored by... Dave
Barr, who scrambled in from the 3 for the Blue team as time expired.
Raise your hand if you knew Dave Barr was a St. Louis Ram, but that's
a tribute to Isaac that such a broad range of players from St. Louis
Rams history came here to be part of this event.
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| Kurt scans the field |
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| Marc scans the field |
* RB: Arlen
Harris was the only true RB in the game, and I believe he scored a
TD. The rushing star, though, had to be Adam Timmerman, who scored
his first Dome TD I believe on a direct snap (tricky Martz) and got
another carry off a fumblerooksi play (tricky Martz again). Those
might have been the only handoffs all game (meaning Martz was right
at home).
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| Touchdown, Timmerman!! |
* Receivers: A
number of the guys really look like they can still play. Torry Holt
scored 3 or 4 TDs and looked like a coil ready to spring every time
he lined up. Az Hakim turned a short pass into an 85-yard TD,
bringing back memories of opening Monday night 2000, even if he
didn't have teammate Torry convoying with him this time. Brandon
Manumaleuna scored a TD, making him the most useful Rams TE to play
in the Dome since, well, Brandon Manumaleuna. Dane Looker caught a TD
and threw for another, a downright bullet to (I think) Tony Horne.
(Tricky Dickie V. this time). Tony seemed to have gone into the
witness protection program after the Greatest Show days, so it was
nice to see him alive and well and looking good. But only one
receiver was truly (M)money, today's secret weapon, Jeff Wilkins, who
caught two TDs from Warner and lined up in the backfield a lot.
That's about the only guy Martz didn't get the ball to during the
Greatest Show, so he made up for it today. Isaac Bruce scored the
Blue team's first TD, caught half a dozen deep digs and was open deep
any time he wanted, but even though this was his game, his
foundation, his brainchild, you weren't ever going to see him
complaining about not getting the ball. That's just Isaac Bruce. He
was the perfect person to put this game together for this city. Also
playing: Rickey Proehl, Roland Williams and Shaun McDonald. Ernie
Conwell was in attendance but I don't think he played.
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| Tony (alive and well) Horne |
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| BOB N WEAVE |
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| Torry celebrates another TD. Timmerman and McCollum also did this after Adam's TD, a pic I regret I didn't get |
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| Torry off to the races again... |
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| ...for yet another Bob 'n Weave |
* Offensive line: Orlando Pace
was honored at halftime for his upcoming induction into the Hall of
Fame, and he also got what was said to be his first touch in the Dome
on one of the White team's multiple lateral adventures. In case
Timmerman's career change to goal line back wasn't amusing enough,
there was also the play where he got a lateral and then lateraled it
away to fellow Donut Brother Andy McCollum. Chris Massey, fittingly,
was one of the snappers. Wayne Gandy and Grant Williams also took the
field.
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| Hall-of-Famer Orlando Pace |
* Defensive line/LB: The
line combat was roughly as intense as it is at any given Pro Bowl.
Most of the time, it was get out of your stance, stand there, try to
knock down the pass. Sean Landeta was a pass rusher for a few plays,
for cryin' out loud. The one violator of the Pro Bowl rule was Jeff
Zgonina. Zgonina's that kid in your pick-up game who believes the
U.S. has a state called “Misp” instead of giving the proper
3-Mississippi count, so he had Bulger on the run a few times. Mike
Jones is built a little more like a DT these days than a LB (hey, so
am I), but you could see the old instincts kick in. He tossed enemy
flags to the turf with enthusiasm. One of my favorite plays: on the
goal line, Bulger dumped off to Roland Williams but Mike Jones downed
him right around the two-yard line and threw his flag down with glee.
Of course Mike Jones was going to make the stop in that part of the
field! Also playing: D'Marco Farr, Ray Agnew, Tommy Polley, Pisa
Tinoisamoa and Chris Draft. D'Marco got a cool tribute during the
game in the form of a legends-of-the-game video like the one that
used to show during games here for Deacon Jones. To be honest,
“tackling” wasn't any worse than it was in a good half of the
current team's games last season.
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| Ray Agnew |
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| Wild-eyed Samoan boy Pisa Tinoisamoa |
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| D'Marco Farr may be sending this game tape to the league office. They'll just say the referees were 100% correct anyway, like they always do |
* Secondary: They weren't
exactly playing press-cover out there. Receivers got large cushions,
and, just like the Greatest Show days, the dig route was wide open
just about any time either offense wanted it. It was fun watching
Aeneas Williams mug Tony Horne at the line a couple of times so he
wouldn't have to chase him around. Aeneas had a certain INT clang off
his hands later. Dre Bly and Mike Furrey also had what I'll
generously call pass breakups. WRs were pressed into playing DB and
vice versa, so the game's key play was Tony Horne's end zone INT. His
White team was already up a TD at the time and they stayed in front
from there. It was very cool to see Isaac lined up in coverage
against Torry late in the game, but Bulger didn't throw that way any
of the times I saw those two squaring off. Dexter McCleon, Keith
Lyle, Billy Jenkins and Rich Coady also played, as did Cliff Crosby,
who scored a TD on offense.
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| Hall-of-Famer Aeneas Williams: still sticky in coverage, if not always legal |
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| Cliff Crosby dives for paydirt |
* Strategery: Al
Saunders was Vermeil's assistant coach. Martz's was the legend, Jim
Hanifan, who is 82 years old, needs a cane to get around and needed a
chair to sit in on the sideline, but who made damn sure he was there
for this event all the same. How do we get Hanny into the Hall of
Fame? In one of the game's biggest surprises, Martz actually saved all his timeouts for the end of the half. After all the years, shoot, he fixed that!
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| Mike Martz |
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| Four wide! |
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| Dick Vermeil and Al Saunders |
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| Jim Hanifan and Brenda Warner |
* Upon further review: The
referees were all volunteers and didn't do much besides spot the
ball. Not a single flag was thrown, even though there were some false
starts and (friendly) muggings in coverage. Wilkins got knocked down
after one catch, which you'd think would be a penalty in flag
football. Eh, they were still better than Jeff Triplette would have
been. Grade: A-minus
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| At the coin toss (Jackie Joyner-Kersee in red shirt) |
* Cheers: I estimate at least
10,000 fans came out; higher attendance than that would not surprise
me. Fun moments during the game included Zgonina chasing down Hakim
while he showboated at the end of his long TD, Mike Furrey getting
his shorts pulled down on a tackle (thank goodness for compression
pants), and me thinking that was Rickey Proehl for a full quarter
afterward. In my defense, they're both bald white guys wearing #87
jerseys. Just about every player praised and thanked St. Louis fans
at some point, whether by pre-taped video or on-field interview. On
behalf of all of us, aw shucks, no, thank YOU. As 10,000 of us in
blue got replaced downtown by 40,000 in red heading to tonight's
Cardinals-Dodgers game, a friendly but clueless woman on Broadway
rolled down her car window and asked, what was going on in there? Why
are there so many people wearing Rams shirts?
Yep. Still a baseball town.
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| Post-game team picture |
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| Thank you Isaac |
* That'll do it.: This is the
final RamView; I have watched my last Rams game. Fans are about love
of the game, but leagues are about love of money, and the NFL made that
clearer to this love-addled fool than ever before with its
loathsomely greedy, back-stabbing, duplicitous and biased behavior
that has returned St. Louis to football purgatory, permanently this
time. My disregard for the team going forward will be equally
permanent. Should Jeff Fisher pull off the unthinkable and lead the
team to the Super Bowl, it'll be the Puppy Bowl that night for this
guy. Or, much more likely, I'll wait till kickoff and then pop in a
DVD of Super Bowl XXXIV. For the many of you staying with the team,
or who got your team back: I've got no quarrel with you and wish you
the best of luck, and I think Roger Angell would agree:
It is
foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with
anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially
exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused
superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut
(I know this look – I know it by heart) is understandable and
almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of the this
calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring – caring
deeply and passionately, really caring
– which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our
lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time where it
no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or
foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself
can be saved. Naivete – the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a
grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of
the night over the hap-hazardous flight of a distant ball – seems a
small price to pay for such a gift.
St.
Louis Rams forever.
-- Mike
