Grand Marshall

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

And teams can't just focus on trying to stop Faulk. It they do, they'll get burned by Warner and his plethora of potent receivers-Isaac Bruce, rookie Torry Holt, Hakim and Ricky Proehl. The Rams do a great job of spreading the ball around, something Faulk probably couldn't have appreciated when he came into the NFL as the second overall draft pick in 1994.

"When I first came in, I felt like we couldn't win if I didn't have the ball," he says, sitting in front of his locker and taking a cinematic break. "It was me, me, me. I wanted the ball. I wanted this, I wanted that.

"Now, I understand that it's a team thing. You just can't be `the show.' With this team, I might not be even a fourth of the show. We have a lot of weapons on offense. I understand that at times my role might be to block some 255-pound linebacker, "and I'm expected to keep him off the quarterback. Sometimes, I've got to run down the field and be the decoy."

Sometimes, he just has to grab a teammate by the shoulder pads and give him a lift.

Dennis Dillon is a contributing editor for THE SPORTING NEWS.