Lyght Looks for a Way to Stop Burns

IRVINE —  Three weeks ago, Rams’ cornerback Todd Lyght was bored with covering his team’s receivers in practice. He wanted something more. He wanted game competition.

Bring on the best, he was saying. Bring them all on.

But after getting blistered for three touchdown passes in exhibition losses to Green Bay and New England, Lyght is losing sleep replaying his gaffes over and over.

“I had a lot of trouble sleeping Saturday night after giving up those two touchdowns to New England,” he said.

“I got a chance to reflect on that on Sunday and get my head together. I felt bad because I let the team down.”

The knock on Lyght is that he’s a nice guy, that he lacks the nasty in-your-face, trash-talking disposition that’s a trademark of Deion Sanders and Kansas City’s Mark Collins. It’s a must for a cornerback expected to intimidate, then shut down the best receivers week after week.

And after giving up three touchdown passes, don’t expect Lyght to start tearing the locker room down.

“Fortunately for us, this is the preseason,” he said. “None of it counts. It’s like practice. I would rather get these touchdowns out of the way now.”

So this is Todd Lyght, a first-round draft pick in 1991, named the Rams’ transition player in 1994 and a rising star that the coaches are billing as a Pro Bowl candidate this season?

“Todd isn’t playing well right now,” said Joe Vitt, assistant head coach. “And nobody wants to play well more than he does. He’s pressing, and it’s going to take him some time to get back in sync.

“He has some adjustments to make, and he’ll make them. I’m 100% confident that Todd will come back and have a Pro Bowl year for us.”

Coming off knee surgery last season, Lyght has looked sterling and sharp during training camp workouts.

But three weeks into the exhibition season, and with the start of the regular season two weeks away, do the Rams dare let him try to cover Sterling Sharpe?

“It’s better to have these things (getting beat) happen in the preseason than during the regular season,” Vitt said. “It could have been that he was never tested in the preseason and we go into the regular season with a false sense of security and then--bam--it happens.”

It has happened early and often in the exhibition season. In the opener, Green Bay wide receiver Robert Brooks beat Lyght for a two-yard touchdown catch.

A week later, after David Lang’s fumble gave New England the ball at the Ram 37-yard line, Patriot quarterback Drew Bledsoe went right at Lyght.

Michael Timpson took Lyght over the middle and made a leaping catch in the end zone for the touchdown. A few minutes later, Vincent Brisby beat Lyght on an out pattern for a four-yard touchdown reception.

“I just have to pick it up,” Lyght said. “I wasn’t getting any balls early in the New England game and I got caught sleeping. We (the defense) had been playing well until I gave up those touchdowns.”

Vitt said Lyght needs to do a better job of reading opposing offenses.

“It’s not that he’s getting beat so bad that he’s out of position,” Vitt said. “He just needs to make the read and finish the play. He had a chance to strip the ball (against Timpson) and he lost track of where he was on the goal line.”

The Rams made a major investment in Lyght during the off-season, naming him a transition player to retain his contract rights after his five-year, $5.5 million deal expires after next season.

In doing so, the Rams will sign him for one season and pay him the average of the salaries of the top 10 players at his position.

They made the investment based on Lyght’s strong play at the start of the 1993 season.

He intercepted two passes and had 44 tackles until he injured his knee in warm-ups against Washington. He underwent arthroscopic surgery and missed the final seven games of the season.

By early March, team trainers said Lyght was 100% healthy, and the cornerback looked impressive in mini-camp workouts in May against a Ram receiving corps that will never been confused with Jerry Rice and John Taylor.

Thanks to an intense off-season rehabilitation program, Lyght, 6 feet and 186 pounds, was considered to be in the best shape of his four-year career when training camp opened July 22. He didn’t disappoint in practice, coming across the field on several occasions to tip passes away during seven-on-seven passing drills.

So what’s the difference between the Todd Lyght on the field during two-a-days and the Todd Lyght you see on the field on Saturday nights?

“I need to practice harder,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve been practicing every day like it was a game, so I’ve been picking up my practice tempo.

“That’s the toughest thing--being out of game tempo. I missed almost half the season last year.”

Still, the question remains whether Lyght will be back in form by the Sept. 4 season opener against Arizona. The Rams desperately need him to cover the murderer’s row of wide receivers they face in the first six weeks of the season--Arizona’s Gary Clark, Atlanta’s Andre Rison (twice), San Francisco’s Rice and Taylor and Green Bay’s Sharpe.

Lyght will get a preview on Saturday night, when the Raiders’ track team of receivers Tim Brown, James Jett, Rocket Ismail and Daryl Hobbs arrives to run some deep routes at Anaheim Stadium.

“That’s an Olympic gold-medal team they have,” Lyght said. “That’s good for us, because we get a look at all that good speed. That’s maybe the best group of wide receivers in the league. If not the best, then a close second.”

In the meantime, the Rams’ coaching staff is content with letting Lyght work through his slump on his own. Even if it means his losing a little sleep over it.

“If we felt that Todd wasn’t aware of how he was playing,” Vitt said, “we would jump on him. Todd knows he’s struggling, and he’s working through this thing.

“There’s no reason to dump gas on a fire right now.”