Something Special : While Rams Are Struggling, Their Kicking Teams Are Among Best in NFL

Special-teams play involves only about one-fifth of football, Gil Haskell figures.

“After a game, the offense gets two cans of film, the defense gets two and we get one,” he said.

But lately, his film has been playing to rave reviews, while the defense has turned mixed and the offense has fallen completely off the Gary Franklin scale of 1 to 10.

Haskell coaches the Rams’ special teams, which are the best in the National Football League. Make the games strictly kickoffs and punts, and the Rams would be in the Super Bowl already. It’s those other guys who are messing things up.

Henry Ellard leads the league in punt returns, averaging 14.1 yards; Ron Brown leads in kickoff returns with a 33.6-yard average, and rookie Dale Hatcher just took the lead in net punting--average punt less return--at 37.8 yards, and is second in stopping the ball inside the 20-yard line, which he has done 26 times.

In the last four weeks, placekicker Mike Lansford has kicked more field goals, 7, than the Rams’ offense has scored touchdowns, 5.

As a group, Haskell’s Rascals also rank second in punt coveragem, with a 6.6-yard average, and fifth in kickoff coverage with a 19.3-yard average.

You won’t find a more anonymous group of overachievers anywhere. After Ellard, Brown, Hatcher and Lansford, how many Ram special-teams players can you name?

Haskell said: “I think Vince Newsome is the best special-teams player in the league. There’s no question in my mind. On punt coverage, he’s the outside guy, and he’s always around the ball.”

At New Orleans last week, Newsome, who also plays defensive back on pass defense, helped set up the Rams’ only points--Lansford’s field goal--on an exchange of punts by downing Hatcher’s 54-yard boot at the three-yard line.

“The same thing happens on kickoffs,” Haskell said. “We kick to his side, and he’s in on the tackles; and on the punt returns, he’s got an important block.

“The core of it is not starters. We’ve got (kick snapper) Ed Brady, Shawn Miller, Mark Jerue, Kevin Greene, Jim Laughlin, Jerry Gray, Newsome, James McDonald and Charles White. The only time the starters play is on the punt return--Johnnie Johnson, Nolan Cromwell, Gary Green, LeRoy Irvin. Green rushes, Nolan and Johnnie hold up the outside guy. On kickoff coverage, Nolan’s the safety.”

Each NFL team nominates three special-teams players for the Pro Bowl, exclusive of kickers or returners. Haskell named Newsome, Jerue and Miller.

Haskell is one of three assistants--Hudson Houck and Marv Goux are the others--whom John Robinson brought with him from USC, where Haskell also coached the special teams, as well as the wide receivers.

Nobody has returned a punt or a kickoff for a touchdown against the Rams in those three years. It’s that kind of achievement that keeps them fired up, as if they needed any added motivation for Monday night’s game against the 49ers in San Francisco.

Haskell himself was raised as a member of the 49er family. An uncle, Dr. William O’Grady, was a 5% owner and the club physician.

“I was always at the games, on the sideline, from the time I was a little kid,” Haskell said. “I worked with the equipment man and helped around the (practice) facility.”

For 12 years, until he left to join Robinson at USC, Haskell was a successful high school coach in San Francisco who dreamed of maybe one day coaching the 49ers.

“But it wasn’t gonna happen,” he said. “Then I had a great opportunity to go to USC.”

There is still a special feeling for the 49ers.

“Sure,” Haskell said. “I’d like to beat ‘em by a hundred points.”

The most apparent improvement in the Rams’ special teams is the punting. Before the draft, Haskell went to South Carolina to check out Hatcher, and when the Rams finally got Haskell calmed down, they drafted the Clemson kicker in the third round. Otherwise, Haskell might have done something desperate.

“He’s done exactly what we thought he would do,” Haskell said. “He’s still going to get better. In practice, he still punts the ball just unbelievably, and then in the game, it’s not quite as smooth.

“He had to learn there were situations in a game. He’s got to think, back there. Before, he just lined up and kicked the ball. He’s like a home run hitter in baseball. When he hits it, it goes. He’s special.”

Fame did not come easily for Hatcher, who grew up in Cheraw, S.C., a town of about 9,000 people that somehow produced two NFL punters this season--Hatcher and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Harry Newsome, who played at Wake Forest.

“Harry and I were the only two (from Cheraw) that ever signed with a major college to play football,” Hatcher said.

“We grew up together. I used to date one of his sisters. We played baseball and both pitched, did all the same things. Got married in the same church by the same preacher. It’s just weird.”

The joy of their success apparently is not shared by some of their other old buddies in Cheraw.

“See, back home, people don’t want to see you do good,” Hatcher said. “I used to drive a 1973 Monte Carlo. The thing smoked and all. That was Mama and Daddy’s car. I never had my own car.

“Then after I signed with the Rams, I come ridin’ home in that Mercedes, and nobody else around there had one, except maybe a few older people that were real wealthy.

“I was out at a football field one day kicking. I saw my friends ride by and I just threw my hand up to wave, and they shot me the finger. They wouldn’t even speak to me no more.”

Hatcher later sold the Mercedes and got a pickup truck.

“I liked (the Mercedes) but I wanted to get out from under that high payment, like $539 a month,” he said.

He and his wife, Lindley, bought a house in Yorba Linda.

“I don’t have any desire to go back home,” Hatcher said. “There’s nothin’ to do. Most people hang out at McDonald’s or at Hardee’s.

“We’ve got a Sonic Drive-In where the waitresses come out with skates on. That was a big thing when we first got it. That’s where everybody hangs out on Friday and Saturday nights, or they go sit in the park and watch everybody ride by.

“A lot of guys are into race cars, jacked up in the back and real loud, with mag rims. It’s the same old thing. I got so tired of it.

“I hope to be out here for a long, long time.”