Boller leads Rams over Bengals 24-21

CINCINNATI (AP)—The last thing that the St. Louis Rams wanted to see was Kyle Boller’s helmet tumbling across the field.

Boller played better Thursday night in his second game filling in for Marc Bulger, completing a flurry of short passes during a 24-21 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. He also had one moment of bravado that made the Rams shudder.

He refused to duck.

Boller got his helmet knocked off on a hit by linebacker Keith Rivers at the end of an 8-yard scramble, waiting too long to start his slide. Unfazed, Boller got to his feet, found his helmet and completed his next two passes, including a 3-yard shovel pass to running back Samkon Gado for a touchdown.

“I could have slid a little earlier,” said Boller, who was 14 of 20 for 96 yards. “It is what it is. My chin strap hit just above my eyes. It was a good scramble, but maybe if I can get down a little sooner, the coaches would like that.”

No kidding.

“I was just trying to get to the ball,” said Rivers, who had his jaw broken on a hit from Pittsburgh’s Hines Ward last season. “It wasn’t anything intentional.”

The Rams lost Bulger to a broken pinkie finger on his passing hand before the last game and couldn’t afford another quarterback setback. Bulger is hoping to be ready for the season opener Sept. 13 at Seattle. Boller struggled as his replacement last week in a 20-13 loss to the Falcons, but seemed much more comfortable against the Bengals.

“He moved the team,” coach Steve Spagnuolo said. “He drove us down there after the bad start. When you score on a drive, the quarterback deserves the credit.”

Both teams were missing their starting quarterbacks, turning the game into a preview of how it might be if their injuries linger. The Bengals were reminded that they really need Carson Palmer back for their opener against Denver.

J.T. O’Sullivan was sacked three times, lost a fumble and had two passes batted away at the line. His best moment was an improvised underhand pass to running back Brian Leonard that went for 25 yards and set up a touchdown. O’Sullivan was 7 of 13 for 94 yards while playing into the third quarter.

With Palmer sidelined the last two games by a sprained left ankle, the offense has moved the ball in spurts but failed to get many points because of penalties and mistakes. O’Sullivan’s fumble at the Cincinnati 20-yard line set up the Rams’ second touchdown.

“We’ve just got to find a way to eliminate it,” O’Sullivan said. “It puts you in such a disadvantage any time you turn the ball over. That’s one of the things that has to change immediately.”

Running back Bernard Scott, a sixth-round draft pick from Abilene Christian, had a fumble that safety James Butler returned 73 yards for a touchdown. Butler also intercepted one of Jordan Palmer’s passes in the third quarter and returned it 68 yards before the third-string quarterback tackled him.

The Bengals have lost five fumbles and thrown three interceptions in three preseason games.

“When you turn the football over, you have a difficult time winning, whether you’re playing in the regular season, the preseason, junior high, sixth grade, whatever it is,” coach Marvin Lewis said.

Quan Cosby, an undrafted receiver from Texas, returned the Rams’ first punt 49 yards for a touchdown, breaking through the front line of defenders into the clear. He ran past punter Donnie Jones to get to the end zone.

Jones also had a punt returned 44 yards by Tom Nelson in the third quarter.

Spags On Loss to the Falcons

BY STEVE KORTE
News-Democrat

Coach Steve Spagnuolo blamed himself for the St. Louis Rams' ugly first quarter Friday night, saying he was guilty of not having his team ready to play.

The Rams (1-1) fell behind 14-0 and could never make up the lost ground as they fell 20-13 to the Atlanta Falcons at the Edward Jones Dome.

"I think it's all on the head coach with the first quarter," Spagnuolo said. "I don't think I had the team ready to play in the first quarter. I'm going to take the onus on that. We need to start the game better, especially against a good football team."

Asked how he was going to make sure the Rams were ready when they travel to Cincinnati to play the Bengals on Thursday, Spagnuolo said he didn't know.

"I'm going to be evaluating myself all the time," Spagnuolo said, "I'll sit back this week, and if I think there's something we can do differently in practice, we'll do it.

"If I think there's something we can say or approach differently the day before the game, we'll do that. But, right now if the team is not ready early like that, it's on the head coach. So we'll figure out a way."

The Falcons (1-1) first-string offense marched down the field with surgical-like precision on their first two drives against the Rams' first-string defense.

Spagnuolo said he couldn't tell in the locker room before the game that his team wasn't prepared.

"Are they ready? Are they not ready?" Spagnuolo said. "Sometimes you'll walk in there and say, 'This team is not ready to play,' and they go out beat a team by 30 points. So that's hard to assess."

The Rams allowed 162 rushing yards. Their starting defense got bludgeoned for 65 yards on seven carries by running back Michael Turner on the opening drive.

The Rams were plagued by poor tackling even though they had live tackling in practice during the first two weeks of training camp.

Spagnuolo said he wasn't going to second guess his decision to scale back on the live tackling during the last week.

"I'm not going to do that to myself," Spagnuolo said. "At some point, we all know in this league you stop doing live tackling in practice because you've got to have guys healthy. I think we will bounce back on that. It wasn't real good last night, but we'll get better at it."

The Rams' first-string produced only three points in the first half.

For the Rams' offense to struggle was more understandable since they were playing without quarterback Marc Bulger (broken pinkie finger), left tackle Alex Barron (swelling on the knee), left guard Jacob Bell (concussion) and wide receiver Donnie Avery (broken foot).

Still, the Rams were 0-for-3 in their red-zone opportunities.

"We talk about it all the time," Spagnuolo said. "When you get in that area of the field, everybody has to remind each other in the huddle that we have to focus and finish. I'm not sure why we didn't finish. I'm not going to blame it on focus. They probably made some good plays, too."

The Rams had a chance to pull out a win after rookie quarterback Keith Null and the third-string offense moved the ball to Atlanta 17 with 1:27 left to play.

But Null had a pass go through the hands of tight end Joe Klopfenstein in the end zone on second down.

"It probably would have been a tough catch, but it was a decent throw, I think," Spagnuolo said. "Keith would tell you that if he had to do it all over again. He would have went somewhere else with it. There was a possibility to make a play there, but it wasn't an easy catch."

Null was intercepted in the end zone by Atlanta safety Eric Brock on fourth down.

Spagnuolo said wide receiver Nate Jones was open on underneath route, but Null tried to throw the ball to tight end Eric Butler.

"They had brought a blitz, which is a good call by them," Spagnuolo said. "(Keith) got it out in time, so the blitz part of it wasn't an issue. It just didn't happen."

Spagnuolo said he didn't know if he would have gone for the win and attempted a two-point conversion instead of kicking the game-tying extra point if the Rams had scored.

"We would have had to talk about that," Spagnuolo said. "I would have liked to have a chance to make that decision."

Rams Pull Out Win in New York

By Nick Wagoner
Senior Writer
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Many of the faces are new both in uniform and among the coaches wearing the headsets. And maybe it was only the first preseason game.

But in the first contest of the Steve Spagnuolo era, the formula for winning remained the same. Run the ball; defend the run, play sound special teams and win the turnover battle and more often than not, you’re going to come away with a victory.

With contributions up and down the roster, the Rams did just that on Friday night as they went on to grab a 23-20 victory against the Jets.

“I saw a lot of guys competing,” Spagnuolo said. “We talked about that two days ago. Anytime you line up and play again it doesn’t matter whether it’s pick-up basketball or backgammon, you compete to win. I thought the guys did that.”

Regardless of what group they were with, nearly every Ram answered that call from Spagnuolo. Perhaps none more so than rookie quarterback Keith Null.

With the Rams trailing 20-16 and 8:51 to play, rookie receiver Brooks Foster recovered a muffed punt at the Jets’ 24. After an 11-yard run by rookie running back Chris Ogbonnaya, Null worked his magic.

Entering the game earlier than planned because of an injury to third quarterback Brock Berlin, Null had thrown just one pass in his infant NFL career. But on second-and-10 from New York’s 13, Null dropped and fired a pass to undrafted rookie Sean Walker’s back shoulder.

It was the type of throw you’d expect from a grizzled veteran, not a small school rookie with little experience. No matter, though, as Walker leaped and made a nice catch in his own right for the winning touchdown.

“I thought he was very poised,” Spagnuolo said. “He made a nice throw from one rookie to another rookie and Sean (Walker) made a nice catch. That was very encouraging. It pumped that football team up. That was the gist of what we were talking about. We didn’t know who was going to be in the game at certain times. Obviously, guys that are down don’t play but we were going to try to compete right until the end and those guys did that.”

The inexperienced Null didn’t even know how to react but veteran Marc Bulger looked out for him, asking a member of the equipment staff to retrieve the ball and give it to Null whether it was a preseason touchdown or not.

“It’s still your first touchdown pass in the NFL,’” Bulger said. “That pass looked like a 10-year veteran. He saw the match-up, and he’s been studying and working hard, and it paid off.”
That wasn’t the only big play provided by a more unheralded member of the Rams. In fact, the biggest play of the night came from one of the forgotten men in the battle for the backup running back job.

Coming out of the locker room trailing 10-9, Samkon Gado returned the opening kickoff 25 yards to New York’s 23. Two plays later, Gado would cover the rest of the distance as he took a handoff to the left side, burst through a hole, dropped a deke on an unsuspecting safety and turned on the speed to rumble 77 yards for a touchdown and a 16-10 lead.

In addition to his kick returning and running Gado also played fullback, proving just how versatile he can be. He finished with six carries for 93 yards with the score.

“About 10-15 yards and I was thinking that’s about as good as its going to be,” Gado said. “Then I saw the safety and was just going to give him a little move and not try to concede or compromise the ball. I guess the move worked. I’m not really known for my moves and after that it was just kind of me and the end zone. I’m pretty confident that once I’m in the open field I knew it was going to be a touchdown.”

As for the rest of the offense, there were plenty of other bright spots. Backup running backs Antonio Pittman and Ogbonnaya did a solid job filling in late after starter Steven Jackson got a couple of carries for 15 yards in a short night of work.

Pittman finished with four carries for 36 yards and the entire group left a mostly positive impression on Spagnuolo.

“I thought all of those guys did a nice job,” Spagnuolo said. “You saw the real long run by Sam. I thought Ogbonnaya did a nice job at the end holding on to the football. For a young guy at the end there when you had to run it out, he was covering up that ball and doing a good job so I give those guys a lot of credit. Antonio ran real well. We’ll watch the film and see how it all leads up but that was encouraging.”

As for the rest of the offense, the first unit aside from Jackson ended up playing more than first quarter after it only got a limited number of snaps in the first quarter.

Bulger played though that and completed all four of his opportunities for 77 yards but was sacked three times. On his final drive of the night, Bulger connected with receiver Laurent Robinson on a gorgeous 50-yard strike down the sideline.

It was just the type of play Spagnuolo had hoped to see when he sent the offense back on to the field in the second quarter.

“The number of plays just weren’t quite enough and we wanted to get a little bit of rhythm,” Spagnuolo said. “And we’re kind of glad we did that.”

On the other side of the ball, the Rams appeared to make some strides in making plays at important times.

Defensive end Leonard Little continued his dominant preseason with a sack and forced fumble on the opening drive to set up a field goal. Later, defensive end Eric Moore did the same to help stall out a potential game winning or tying drive by the Jets.

Perhaps most impressive was the Rams’ holding the Jets to 102 yards on 28 carries, an average of just 3.6 per attempt. And 62 of those yards came on two plays.

Jackson, for one, was happy to see the Rams perform the way they did in the first contest under Spagnuolo.

“It’s good to see the young guys play in the first preseason game,” Jackson said. “They were able to create turnovers, protect the ball on offense, and come out with the win. That’s what you want to see.”

The Rams will have Saturday off but Spagnuolo wanted to pass along the message that there is still plenty that needs to be done between now and the season opener for the team to get where he wants it to go.

“It’s good to win a football game,” Spagnuolo said. “It’s good to win anything when you’re competing so we’re happy with that. We’ve certainly got a lot of work to do. I said it to the team in there. I said last night that this is only the beginning, no matter what happens, so we’re not going to think that we’ve arrived. We’ve still got a lot of work to do and we’ll get right back at it. They’ll have the day off tomorrow and get right back at it on Sunday.”

For Spagnuolo and the Rams, the hope is that process becomes business as usual.