Grand Marshall

Sporting News, The, Dec 27, 1999 by Dennis Dillon

Marshall Faulk has wowed the Rams with not only his big-play rushing and receiving ability, bid his keen understanding of the game

In a season in which he has rushed for 1,248 yards and caught 72 passes for an additional 817 yards, something is missing in the signature snapshot of Marshall Faulk: the ball.

On October 31, the Rams trail the Titans, 24-21, with just over a minute left in the fourth quarter. St. Louis is out of timeouts as it tries to move into position for a game-tying field goal. On fourth-and-10 from the Titans' 44, Kurt Warner completes a 15-yard pass to wideout Az Hakim, who is left dazed and lying on the field after being hit by safety Marcus Robertson.

The clock is ticking. Faulk runs up to Hakim, lifts him up by the shoulder pads and tells him to stand still. Then Faulk moves into position so Warner can stop the clock by spiking the ball on first down. Four plays later, Jeff Wilkins misses a 38-yard field-goal attempt, and the Rams suffer their first loss of the season.

The defeat doesn't obscure what Faulk did. Had the officials stopped play bemuse Hakim could not get up, it would have cost the Rams 10 seconds off the clock, the rule when a trailing team with no timeouts forces a stoppage in play because of an injury. They might not have been able to complete two more passes, which moved the team 9 yards closer for Wilkins' attempt.

"It was just an unbelievable thing," Rams running backs coach Wilbert Montgomery says of Faulk's savvy maneuver.

Unbelievable describes the turnabout of the Rams, who shed the skin of the NFL's worst franchise in the '90s and became the first team to claim a playoff spot in this century-taming season. Afar a three-year retreat during which they went from seven victories (in '95) to six, then five, then four, they launched an offensive assault that has lifted them into the postseason for the first time in 10 years.

You'll find Faulk's footprints all over the Rams' metamorphosis. He has rushed for 100 yards seven times; the Rams produced only six 100-yard performances by a back in their first four seasons in St. Louis. He has scored nine touchdowns. He leads the league in total yards from scrimmage again (he finished first in '98). His versatility--the Rams can line him up in the backfield, in the slot or split wide--and ability to make defenders miss in the open field are what keep defensive coordinators up at night.

Those attributes alone make a strong argument for Faulk being the NFL's most valuable player. But when the Rams acquired the 5-10, 211-pound running back from the Colts last April for second and fifth-round picks in the '99 draft he also brought with him to St. Louis an extraordinary cognizance of the game and a shrewd vigilance on the field.

"The biggest thing that sticks out to me is how mentally strong and aware he is," says Warner, the other new piece in the Rams' arsenal who made the improbable vault from Arena League quarterback to NFL passing leader. "I've never been around a player at that position who's that talented but also understands the game as well as he does."

It's shortly after 9 a.m. on a Monday, 18 hours after a 30-14 victory over the Saints, and Faulk sits in the dimly lit running backs meeting room at the Rams' training facility. Many of his teammates are still in bed, the coaches having given the players the day off, but Faulk has come in to watch tape of the New Orleans game. He'll be back again tomorrow, another day off, to study tape of the Giants, the next opponent.

This is Faulk's modus operandi. He comes in early for treatment, then heads upstairs to Montgomery's office, where he grabs whatever tapes the coach has left on his desk. Needing only a large container of coffee and a comfortable chair, Faulk then sits down--sometimes in Montgomery's office, sometimes in the running backs room--and, as Montgomery puts it, "grinds all the film he possibly can." Sometimes, Montgomery will leave for a meeting, and when he returns, Faulk has drawn up a play that he thinks can work.

The running backs meet three or four times as a group on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but that's not enough for Faulk. Though some Rams players like to spend their free minutes in the rec room, playing pool or watching TV, Faulk stays in the meeting room "grinding" away. He'll not only study the opponent in its last three games, which is standard procedure, but look at situation-specific tapes, such as short-yardage plays, blitzes and nickel alignments.

"I've always been hungry to learn about the game, to be a step ahead of the next person," says Faulk, 26. "I just hate to mess up. I don't think there's room for error in football. It's a high-impact game, and people's lives are on the line out there, so to speak. I want to make sure I'm prepared; I want to make sure I'm ready.".

Against the Saints, Faulk rushed a season-high 29 times for 154 yards, caught five passes for 56 yards and scored two touchdowns--a four-star performance by most anyone's standards. But Faulk is a tough self-critic. He's looking for blemishes, not beauty marks.