Saints 12 Rams 43 The Saints gave up 4 TDs in the final quarter-and-a-half as the Rams pulled away. In the first half, the Saints held the high-flying Rams offense to only 78 yds. However, St. Louis still scored a pair of TDs- Horne's return of the opening kickoff to the NO 30 set up a 25 yd scoring catch by Holt; a second Horne kickoff return into Saints territory (coupled with a questionable pass interference call on Ashley Ambrose) set up a 1 yd Faulk TD run. A two-point run by Faulk put the Rams' halftime total at 15. Meanwhile, despite being without the services of Ricky Williams (who missed his first game since his pre-college days), Billy Joe Hobert led the Saints offense on four FG drives- Doug Brien was true from 51, 42, 45, and 35. In the second half, the Saints picked up where they left off, and even did a little better- a 7-minute-plus drive to start the third quarter marked the Saints' first TD threat of the game. However, the team failed to get into the endzone, and Brien doinked what would've been a game-tying 24 yd FG off the left upright. From there, it was all Rams. St. Louis drove 80 yds for a TD, which took the form of a 6 yd Faulk run. Following a Saints punt, the Rams came back with a 67 yd drive, which culminated in a 3 yd Holcombe TD run. After Hobert was intercepted at the Ram 24, the home team drove down the field and scored via a 20 yd Holt TD reception. Hobert was intercepted again, this time at the NO 28; the Rams closed out the scoring with a 1 yd Hodgins TD run with 1:14 left. stats (view with a fixed-width font, like Courier) ^^^^^ runnin'........../..........passin' & catchin' 2- 11 B.J. Hobert D. Wuerffel 18- 54 Lamar Smith 4- 36 1- 3 Troy Davis 6- 19 Wilmont Perry 1- 11 1- 15 Eddie Kennison 5- 33 Keith Poole 1- 18 Andre Hastings 9-113 Cameron Cleeland 4- 54 1- 8 28-102 TOTAL 23-254 2- 19 inc 16 4 INT 2 0 runnin'........../..........passin' & catchin' 1- 1 K. Warner 18-102-2 Marshall Faulk 2- 13 4- 24-1 Robert Holcombe 1- 10 3- 3-1 James Hodgins Torry Holt 5- 87-2 Isaac Bruce 5- 81 Az-zahir Hakim 2- 22 26-130-4 TOTAL 15-213-2 inc 12 INT 0 notes ^^^^^ * William Whitehead must've forgotten about the NFL's no throat-slash gesture edict issued this week (he used one after notching a first-quarter sack) * in the second quarter, it was disconcerting to watch the officials measure for a 1st down a couple of plays after a touchback, both because they didn't realize that the 30-yardline was the 1st down line, and because the chains came up a few inches short of the 30-yardline * since 1992, every team has been to the playoffs except the Saints, the Rams (who figure to make it this year), the Seahawks (who figure to make it this year), the Redskins (who have a good chance at making it this year), the Bengals, and either the Browns or Ravens (depending on who you credit the Browns' 1994 playoff appearance to) ******************************************************************************* Frank Serpas III serpas@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu