Rams -Cardinals 2011 in St. Louis

Ok, this wasn’t exactly a preview of the NFC championship game. But I love high level football and I got decent tickets fairly cheap; they were on the goal line, on the first row of the upper deck. They were high up enough to provide a good game perspective but low enough to where I really didn’t use my binoculars. One worry: my short wife had trouble seeing over the rail though I didn’t (she is 5′ 2″ whereas I am 6′ 0″).

I’d go to more games, but it is about a 3 hour drive to the Jones Dome from my house.

(photos from yahoo)

The game started reasonably well; though the offense didn’t do much, the Rams struck first blood with a spectacular punt return for a touchdown.

From then on, save some turn overs, the Cardinals controlled play with their ground game (268 yards!). They had a ton of success with power sweeps. Still they were held to a first half field goal, and they made some mistakes that the Rams failed to take advantage of. An interception gave the Rams the ball on the Cardinal 31, but on third down a blind side sack (the defensive end beat the offensive tackle) caused a fumble, which the Cardinals recovered.

In the second quarter, the Rams ended the half with a nice 63 yard drive which got them down to the 3 yard line with a 1′st and goal; about 1:20 was left in the half. But an illegal motion penalty followed by a sack pushed the Rams back…and then the Rams deliberately let the clock tick down instead of trying a couple of shots at the end zone. Instead, they let it tick down to 12 seconds, tried an end zone pass, and then kicked a long field goal to go up 10-3 at the half.

The Cardinals won the 3′rd quarter; they started with a long drive (lead by a spectacular run) which lead to a field goal.

The Rams promptly fumbled the ball away, and that lead to a Cardinal touchdown.

The Rams had to punt and that lead to a punt return for a touchdown; the kicker kicked the ball down the middle whereas the Rams had prepared for “half field” coverage.

And the end of 3, it was 20-10 Cardinals. The Rams did drive for a field goal to cut it to 20-13 early in the 4′th.

On the Cardinals first possession of the 4′th, they threw an interception. But though the Rams started at the Cardinal 37, they could do little with the ball and ended up missing a field goal attempt (50+ yards).

After an exchange of punts, the Rams got another fumble at the Arizona 43; they converted this one into a touchdown (pass) to tie the game 20-20. But the Cardinals returned to their strong ground game and went up 23-20 following a long drive.

The Rams still had time to win the game, but ended up with 4′th and 1 at their own 37 yard line with 3:15 to go. They had to punt (I thought) and the Cardinals ended up running out the rest of the clock; the Rams couldn’t stop them from running.

The opportunities were there, but too many were wasted.

Note: running back Steven Jackson is a workhorse and has had a fine career. But he seemed a 1/8′th of a step slow; he was an inch or two from busing a big play man times but got brought down by shoestring arm tackles. 2-3 years ago he would have broken off big plays.