For a change, Rams looking up at rest of the league

ST. LOUIS -- The Rams excelled at outrunning their mistakes on the way to two Super Bowls in the past three years.

They averaged over 30 points each season behind Kurt Warner's uncannily accurate arm, Marshall Faulk's eye for the end zone, a brigade of speedy wide receivers and an ever-improving defense.

This season, they are 0-2 and looking up at the rest of the NFL with an attack that has looked somewhat drab and predictable, and a defense that bends far too much and puts no pressure on the quarterback.

Counting the loss to New England in the Super Bowl last February and the preseason, the Rams have lost seven in a row.

Yet, the team is far from worried. As coach Mike Martz pointed out Monday, a play here and a play there and the Rams are 2-0. Just like last year, when the Rams overcame sloppiness in a three-point overtime victory against Philadelphia and a four-point win over San Francisco en route to their third straight 6-0 start.

"Last year at this time we could be sitting here at 0-2 very easily," Martz said Monday. "It's not an attitude thing."

Warner blamed himself repeatedly for the 26-21 loss to the New York Giants on Sunday, bemoaning his late interception just after the 2-minute warning that snuffed out the Rams' last chance. It was Warner's second interception and the last of St. Louis' four turnovers.

"This one's completely on me," the NFL's MVP said, never looking more dejected.

But he was the exception. Others on the team are far from panic mode.

"It's no time to sulk," Faulk said minutes after the loss. "What we've got to do is get better. We've got to fix the things that are wrong."

Two weeks into the season, the Rams are already facing long odds in their quest for a third Super Bowl appearance in four years.

Only three teams in NFL history have begun the year with two losses and made it to the title game -- the Patriots in 1996 and last year, and the Dallas Cowboys in 1993.

Want more? Since the league went to a 16-game schedule in 1976, 176 teams have started out 0-2 and only 17 made the playoffs. And in Rams history, only two teams have made the playoffs after an 0-2 start, in 1952 and 1980.

The schedule isn't any easier, either, with the Rams at Tampa Bay on Monday night.

That the Patriots rebounded from a 1-3 beginning last year is encouraging to the Rams, along with the fact that there are no unbeaten teams in the NFC West.

Perhaps because the No. 1 offense was together so little in the preseason, somewhat due to injuries and somewhat due to a reluctance on Martz' part to expose his stars, players seem to still be in get-to-know-each-other phase. There's a lot less flash than in previous seasons under Martz, with the only innovation on Sunday a no-huddle offense that was somewhat effective.

Cover 2 defenses have taken away the long ball for the most part and the Rams, forced to grind it out, are in the bottom third of the league with an average of just 18 points per game. Last year, they averaged 31.

They're next-to-last in the NFL with six turnovers, and a minus-3 in giveaway-takeaway ratio.

The turnaround, players believe, could begin now. Help is on the way for the offense, with Terrence Wilkins finally getting a handle on the system and Troy Edwards back from a knee injury.

"It's not like we're going in the tank or anything," Faulk said. "We're not going away. You don't panic in this business because a lot of things can happen."

Likely, Martz has never been so upbeat after a loss, knowing there is a long way to go.

"You can lose a team real early, real easy, if you're not careful," Martz said. "You can berate them and talk about all the things that are wrong or you can fix them and move on, and I'm not talking about a Pollyanna approach by any stretch of the imagination.

"You coach it, you correct it, you try to keep them uplifted, and you move on."