Rams move on without Martz

~ The ailing coach said he is done meddling.

ST. LOUIS -- Life without Mike Martz truly begins Sunday for the St. Louis Rams.

Martz is gone for the season, and maybe for good, due to a heart ailment combined with an escalating feud with the front office. Unlike the previous two games that he missed, when he kept almost daily contact with interim coach Joe Vitt, he insists from now on there will be no meddling.

Martz stopped by the team complex on Thursday to fill out some paper work, but is under doctor's orders to throttle back until January so antibiotics can do their work, and he was gone long before practice began.

"I'm out of this," Martz said. "It's not fair to these guys."

That goes for the players, too. They've got enough to worry about without concerning themselves with the condition of their coach, or whether he'll be back next year.

The one certainty: If they can win Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars (4-2), the Rams (3-4) can enter their bye week having recovered from a three-game losing streak and with most if not all of their injured stars ready to return.

"If you don't take care of today, there is no future," Rams defensive lineman Tyoka Jackson said. "I'm not sitting around worrying about what's going to happen next year or in two years from now, or next week.

"I've got to figure out how to help my defense put Byron Leftwich on the ground."

The Rams won last week without Martz, not to mention quarterback Marc Bulger, both starting wide receivers and defensive end Leonard Little. All could be missing again, the first three with injuries and Little in mourning after a younger brother's shooting death, although all are expected back after the bye.

That won't help today against the Jaguars, coming off their bye. The time off allowed running back Fred Taylor to recover from an ankle injury that sidelined him for a game.

"If we had to play last week he would have been a little bit sore, still," Jacksonville coach Jack Del Rio said. "Things like that were to our benefit, for sure."

Discounting the rest, the Jaguars have been a much more consistent team. They'll be trying to win their third straight and make it eight of 11 dating to last season behind a stingy defense that hasn't allowed a point in the first quarter all season and an offense that also features Leftwich and Jimmy Smith.

The Jaguars beat the Seahawks in the opener, won in overtime at Pittsburgh last week, and beat the Bengals the week before that. They've feasted on beat-up teams like the Rams, going 3-1 in the last four games against teams minus significant stars.

This game doesn't figure to be high-scoring, given that the Jaguars have gone a league-high 56 games without reaching 30 points and the Rams will likely be without Bulger, Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce.

The Rams haven't been consistent on either side of the ball, but are coming off their best defensive performance by far. After giving up touchdowns on the Saints' first two drives, St. Louis allowed only three points the rest of the way in last week's come-from-behind 28-17 victory.

This, after getting gouged for 126 points the previous three games.

"Obviously, we were shorthanded with Leonard not being there, so all of us had to do our jobs even better," Jackson said. "But there's nothing superhuman about it, just do what you're supposed to do."

Quarterback Jamie Martin, the Rams' 36-year-old backup, is coming off his first start since 2002 and his first career victory.