When the news came to Isaac Bruce on April 15, 1999 that the Rams team for which he had been carrying the offensive freight since its arrival in St. Louis was adding one of the league’s most diverse and dynamic running backs, he couldn’t believe it.

Not in a “this is really great, I feel so lucky” kind of way so much as he actually didn’t believe it.

To Bruce, it might as well have been a late April fool’s Day joke that the Rams had actually just traded a second and fifth round pick to the Colts for superstar back Marshall Faulk.

“I thought it was a hoax at first,” Bruce said. “I just knew the type of talent he had, the things he was doing over in Indy, I was surprised they were willing to trade him. It’s kind of like Indy coming over tomorrow and saying we want to trade Peyton Manning. So it was kind of in that same thought process. When he got here and walked in the locker room, I was like ‘Oh yeah, we are legit now.’”

The moment was real and the addition of Faulk did immediately add legitimacy to the Rams’ pursuits. What grew from that day was one of the greatest careers a running back would ever enjoy.

It’s a career that culminates on Saturday when Faulk is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. It’s a career that helped re-define the way running backs are viewed and used in the NFL. It’s a career that never was steered toward the Hall of Fame but seemed destined for it almost from the beginning.

“I don’t believe you can set the Hall of Fame as a goal,” Faulk said. “The Pro Football Hall of Fame, this is unattainable. There are no goals. When you set out to make the Hall of Fame, they don’t give you targets to shoot at. In baseball, you know what you have to do to make the Hall of Fame. In basketball, you pretty much know what you have to do to make the Hall of Fame. In football, when you start off you don’t know what you have to do to make it.”

PUSHING THROUGH

Looking back at it now, it seems like Faulk’s journey to the Hall of Fame was an easy one. It’s not hard to romanticize his voyage by simply thinking back to the days of the Greatest Show on Turf and all of the wins and accolades that came with that special place and time.

What’s forgotten is that really nothing came easy to Faulk. Sure, he was a gifted natural athlete with an uncanny ability to see things a step or two before they happened. But in the early part of his career, road blocks to success were abundant.

While Faulk was performing at a high level and going to the Pro Bowl nearly every year, his team was struggling to find victories and though Faulk was having personal success, it was team triumph that he craved.

Even in the moments he was honored, he seemed to be short shrifted which amuses him now when asked about the cancelation of this year’s Hall of Fame game.

“It’s funny, this goes in line with a lot of things that when I look at in my career, have sort of happened to me,” Faulk said. “When I got drafted it was the year before they went over to Radio City (Music Hall) so it wasn’t made a big production. When I won the Super Bowl, it was the year we could not go see the President. The year I won Rookie of the Year, we were not given a car that year. It fits into those moments for me so although it would be great to have the game I don’t look at it like that.”

Faulk spent his first five seasons in Indianapolis, toiling away for a Colts team that was on the rise near the end of his tenure there but one that never really seemed to gain traction fast enough.

When the time came for the two sides to part ways, Faulk hoped to be traded to a winner. When the deal was made and Faulk was shipped to St. Louis, he had his reservations.

“I took my time and I thought about it and I think the best thing that I did was I decided to go to minicamp and I got a chance to be around the likes of Isaac Bruce, Trent Green, etc,” Faulk said. “I got an opportunity to see that this team was a team that was full of guys that had the same feeling of being all about the middle part of our career and we felt that why not us, right here, right now?”

THE ENGINE

It didn’t take long for Faulk to realize that he was moving into a situation that could be beneficial for him. In addition to all of the offensive talent surrounding him – guys like Bruce, Orlando Pace, Kurt Warner and Torry Holt – never had there been a better marriage between coach and player than there was between Faulk and Mike Martz.

Martz had grown up as a coach in the Don Coryell system. He believed in creating mismatches and airing it out, keeping his foot on the gas at all times.

On the surface, that wouldn’t seem to be much of a match for a running back. But Martz recognized in Faulk a skill set that had not been fully utilized in his first five years in the league.

Martz conveyed that message to Faulk and the two struck up the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

“People really didn’t understand what his philosophy was with me,” Faulk said. “Mike knew – he watched what happened in Washington with Stephen Davis and wear him down. He was with the Rams early on with Jerome Bettis and watched them wear him down. And Mike and this was his thing with me – ‘I will make sure I can get everything out of you and not have it be all used up in the run.’ By turning it around and throwing me the ball just past the line of scrimmage he wanted me to treat that like I just broke the line of scrimmage and got away from the 300 pounds defensive lineman, now go do your work. So his infatuation with the passing game, it didn’t bother me. You never heard me say I want the ball more.”

With the understanding that he’d be getting the ball plenty, just in more unconventional ways than most backs, Faulk took to the system quickly. Even faster, the system took to him.

There will long be debates about which Rams was the most irreplaceable from the glory days of the Greatest Show on Turf but there’s little question about the cog that made it all go.

“Marshall, he was the engine,” Bruce said. “And you can’t drive a car without an engine.”

For coaches around the league trying to find ways to slow the Rams’ offensive juggernaut, it was always a pick your poison kind of deal. Try to take away Faulk and Warner and Co. burn you over the top. Take away the deep ball and Faulk goes to work.

But most opposing defensive coaches will readily admit that the thing about Faulk was you could always game plan for him until you were blue in the face but it didn’t mean you’d be able to stop or even slow him down.

Take current Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo for example. A part of Philadelphia’s defensive staff in 2001 when the Eagles and Rams squared off for the NFC Championship, Spagnuolo and his colleagues prepared early in the week for an aggressive matchup with five-wide formations taking on exotic blitz packages.

With Warner battling a rib injury all week, the onus seemed to turn to Faulk. But the Rams attempted to continue the high wire passing attack in the first half to little success.

At halftime, Martz decided to put the ball – and the game – in Faulk’s hands.

“We felt to win this game, we had to get that ball to Marshall,” Martz said at the time. “I think what everybody thinks – he is just a great player. … He took over the ballgame in certain situations.”

On the opposite sideline, Spagnuolo watched as Faulk carried the load in the third quarter as the Rams ran 22 of the 28 total plays in the quarter, highlighted by a touchdown from Faulk and numerous other carries.
When all was said and done, Faulk had carried his team back to the Super Bowl to play in front of his hometown fans in New Orleans.

“I remember an NFC championship game where he got the ball eight straight times at the beginning of the second half and wore down the Philadelphia Eagles, which I happened to be a part of,” Spagnuolo said. “He gave defenses big headaches. I mean, when you have a guy in the backfield that can threaten you as a wide receiver and as a runner, I mean, that’s a tough guy. That’s why he is going in the Hall of Fame.”

THE BIG DAY

The Hall of Fame might never have been a thought in his mind during his career but now that the time has come and Faulk takes his rightful place among the game’s power elite, it certainly seems predestined.

“I cannot think of a more deserving person for this honor,” Rams Owner/Chairman E. Stanley Kroenke said. “Marshall Faulk epitomizes what all football players should aspire to in sport and in life. He was a champion on the field and a leader in the community. He represented the St. Louis Rams and our fans in a first class manner from Day 1. He accomplished things on the field that no one before or since has achieved in the storied history of the National Football League. It was a privilege to watch him play and an even greater honor to know him.”

Faulk spent the time leading up to his induction making phone calls to some of the game’s greats, guys like Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice about what to expect when he gets inducted on Saturday.

Rocky Arceneaux, Faulk’s long time agent and close friend is going to present him. Among those expected to be in attendance this weekend are luminaries such as Bruce, Pace, Holt, Warner, Martz and many more of Faulk’s teammates.

While the honor itself is great, it’s the presence of those players and friends he truly cherishes.

“It’s a great honor when you send out those invites and your teammates – your friends and your family are going to come – but your teammates, the guys you played with, the guys you had the lows of losing and the highs of winning with, that you’ve reached the pinnacle of what this game is all about which is winning the Super Bowl,” Faulk said. “When they start RSVPing and calling saying ‘Thank you for inviting me, I will be there’ that’s what you want. That’s when you know guys that you played with respected you as much as you respected them.”

The weekend will serve as a sort of de facto reunion for the “Greatest Show on Turf,” a moment that was anticipated long ago.

“We all expected it,” Bruce said. “We expected to have this moment. We expected to have this kind of reunion between players, everybody showing up in Canton and supporting Marshall. It’s huge for this organization, huge for him and very, very well warranted. I always said he’s one of the better football players, not just running backs, one of the better football players in this league.”

Faulk doesn’t want to even take a guess at what his emotions will be when he steps on the stage and thanks the many people that helped him along the way and tells his story of struggle and perseverance. He doesn’t even want to allude to the idea that he dreamed this day would come.

“My goal when I got into the NFL was to have fun, be successful and take care of my family,” Faulk said. “If I left a mark on the NFL or made a big name for myself, all of that was extra. But I made sure I respected the game, had fun playing it, took care of my family and hoped I walked away from the game the same way I walked in: healthy, happy, with an understanding that this game went on before me and it will go on after.”

Yes, the game has and will continue to go on without Marshall Faulk. But the one thing this weekend will provide that can’t be accounted for is the simple fact that while the game will go on, Faulk will never be forgotten.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters featured article: A ‘Malign Intellectual Subculture’ – George Monbiot Smears Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger And Media Lens.

St. Louis Rams : News

When the news came to Isaac Bruce on April 15, 1999 that the Rams team for which he had been carrying the offensive freight since its arrival in St. Louis was adding one of the league’s most diverse and dynamic running backs, he couldn’t believe it.

Not in a “this is really great, I feel so lucky” kind of way so much as he actually didn’t believe it.

To Bruce, it might as well have been a late April fool’s Day joke that the Rams had actually just traded a second and fifth round pick to the Colts for superstar back Marshall Faulk.

“I thought it was a hoax at first,” Bruce said. “I just knew the type of talent he had, the things he was doing over in Indy, I was surprised they were willing to trade him. It’s kind of like Indy coming over tomorrow and saying we want to trade Peyton Manning. So it was kind of in that same thought process. When he got here and walked in the locker room, I was like ‘Oh yeah, we are legit now.’”

The moment was real and the addition of Faulk did immediately add legitimacy to the Rams’ pursuits. What grew from that day was one of the greatest careers a running back would ever enjoy.

It’s a career that culminates on Saturday when Faulk is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. It’s a career that helped re-define the way running backs are viewed and used in the NFL. It’s a career that never was steered toward the Hall of Fame but seemed destined for it almost from the beginning.

“I don’t believe you can set the Hall of Fame as a goal,” Faulk said. “The Pro Football Hall of Fame, this is unattainable. There are no goals. When you set out to make the Hall of Fame, they don’t give you targets to shoot at. In baseball, you know what you have to do to make the Hall of Fame. In basketball, you pretty much know what you have to do to make the Hall of Fame. In football, when you start off you don’t know what you have to do to make it.”

PUSHING THROUGH

Looking back at it now, it seems like Faulk’s journey to the Hall of Fame was an easy one. It’s not hard to romanticize his voyage by simply thinking back to the days of the Greatest Show on Turf and all of the wins and accolades that came with that special place and time.

What’s forgotten is that really nothing came easy to Faulk. Sure, he was a gifted natural athlete with an uncanny ability to see things a step or two before they happened. But in the early part of his career, road blocks to success were abundant.

While Faulk was performing at a high level and going to the Pro Bowl nearly every year, his team was struggling to find victories and though Faulk was having personal success, it was team triumph that he craved.

Even in the moments he was honored, he seemed to be short shrifted which amuses him now when asked about the cancelation of this year’s Hall of Fame game.

“It’s funny, this goes in line with a lot of things that when I look at in my career, have sort of happened to me,” Faulk said. “When I got drafted it was the year before they went over to Radio City (Music Hall) so it wasn’t made a big production. When I won the Super Bowl, it was the year we could not go see the President. The year I won Rookie of the Year, we were not given a car that year. It fits into those moments for me so although it would be great to have the game I don’t look at it like that.”

Faulk spent his first five seasons in Indianapolis, toiling away for a Colts team that was on the rise near the end of his tenure there but one that never really seemed to gain traction fast enough.

When the time came for the two sides to part ways, Faulk hoped to be traded to a winner. When the deal was made and Faulk was shipped to St. Louis, he had his reservations.

“I took my time and I thought about it and I think the best thing that I did was I decided to go to minicamp and I got a chance to be around the likes of Isaac Bruce, Trent Green, etc,” Faulk said. “I got an opportunity to see that this team was a team that was full of guys that had the same feeling of being all about the middle part of our career and we felt that why not us, right here, right now?”

THE ENGINE

It didn’t take long for Faulk to realize that he was moving into a situation that could be beneficial for him. In addition to all of the offensive talent surrounding him – guys like Bruce, Orlando Pace, Kurt Warner and Torry Holt – never had there been a better marriage between coach and player than there was between Faulk and Mike Martz.

Martz had grown up as a coach in the Don Coryell system. He believed in creating mismatches and airing it out, keeping his foot on the gas at all times.

On the surface, that wouldn’t seem to be much of a match for a running back. But Martz recognized in Faulk a skill set that had not been fully utilized in his first five years in the league.

Martz conveyed that message to Faulk and the two struck up the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

“People really didn’t understand what his philosophy was with me,” Faulk said. “Mike knew – he watched what happened in Washington with Stephen Davis and wear him down. He was with the Rams early on with Jerome Bettis and watched them wear him down. And Mike and this was his thing with me – ‘I will make sure I can get everything out of you and not have it be all used up in the run.’ By turning it around and throwing me the ball just past the line of scrimmage he wanted me to treat that like I just broke the line of scrimmage and got away from the 300 pounds defensive lineman, now go do your work. So his infatuation with the passing game, it didn’t bother me. You never heard me say I want the ball more.”

With the understanding that he’d be getting the ball plenty, just in more unconventional ways than most backs, Faulk took to the system quickly. Even faster, the system took to him.

There will long be debates about which Rams was the most irreplaceable from the glory days of the Greatest Show on Turf but there’s little question about the cog that made it all go.

“Marshall, he was the engine,” Bruce said. “And you can’t drive a car without an engine.”

For coaches around the league trying to find ways to slow the Rams’ offensive juggernaut, it was always a pick your poison kind of deal. Try to take away Faulk and Warner and Co. burn you over the top. Take away the deep ball and Faulk goes to work.

But most opposing defensive coaches will readily admit that the thing about Faulk was you could always game plan for him until you were blue in the face but it didn’t mean you’d be able to stop or even slow him down.

Take current Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo for example. A part of Philadelphia’s defensive staff in 2001 when the Eagles and Rams squared off for the NFC Championship, Spagnuolo and his colleagues prepared early in the week for an aggressive matchup with five-wide formations taking on exotic blitz packages.

With Warner battling a rib injury all week, the onus seemed to turn to Faulk. But the Rams attempted to continue the high wire passing attack in the first half to little success.

At halftime, Martz decided to put the ball – and the game – in Faulk’s hands.

“We felt to win this game, we had to get that ball to Marshall,” Martz said at the time. “I think what everybody thinks – he is just a great player. … He took over the ballgame in certain situations.”

On the opposite sideline, Spagnuolo watched as Faulk carried the load in the third quarter as the Rams ran 22 of the 28 total plays in the quarter, highlighted by a touchdown from Faulk and numerous other carries.
When all was said and done, Faulk had carried his team back to the Super Bowl to play in front of his hometown fans in New Orleans.

“I remember an NFC championship game where he got the ball eight straight times at the beginning of the second half and wore down the Philadelphia Eagles, which I happened to be a part of,” Spagnuolo said. “He gave defenses big headaches. I mean, when you have a guy in the backfield that can threaten you as a wide receiver and as a runner, I mean, that’s a tough guy. That’s why he is going in the Hall of Fame.”

THE BIG DAY

The Hall of Fame might never have been a thought in his mind during his career but now that the time has come and Faulk takes his rightful place among the game’s power elite, it certainly seems predestined.

“I cannot think of a more deserving person for this honor,” Rams Owner/Chairman E. Stanley Kroenke said. “Marshall Faulk epitomizes what all football players should aspire to in sport and in life. He was a champion on the field and a leader in the community. He represented the St. Louis Rams and our fans in a first class manner from Day 1. He accomplished things on the field that no one before or since has achieved in the storied history of the National Football League. It was a privilege to watch him play and an even greater honor to know him.”

Faulk spent the time leading up to his induction making phone calls to some of the game’s greats, guys like Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice about what to expect when he gets inducted on Saturday.

Rocky Arceneaux, Faulk’s long time agent and close friend is going to present him. Among those expected to be in attendance this weekend are luminaries such as Bruce, Pace, Holt, Warner, Martz and many more of Faulk’s teammates.

While the honor itself is great, it’s the presence of those players and friends he truly cherishes.

“It’s a great honor when you send out those invites and your teammates – your friends and your family are going to come – but your teammates, the guys you played with, the guys you had the lows of losing and the highs of winning with, that you’ve reached the pinnacle of what this game is all about which is winning the Super Bowl,” Faulk said. “When they start RSVPing and calling saying ‘Thank you for inviting me, I will be there’ that’s what you want. That’s when you know guys that you played with respected you as much as you respected them.”

The weekend will serve as a sort of de facto reunion for the “Greatest Show on Turf,” a moment that was anticipated long ago.

“We all expected it,” Bruce said. “We expected to have this moment. We expected to have this kind of reunion between players, everybody showing up in Canton and supporting Marshall. It’s huge for this organization, huge for him and very, very well warranted. I always said he’s one of the better football players, not just running backs, one of the better football players in this league.”

Faulk doesn’t want to even take a guess at what his emotions will be when he steps on the stage and thanks the many people that helped him along the way and tells his story of struggle and perseverance. He doesn’t even want to allude to the idea that he dreamed this day would come.

“My goal when I got into the NFL was to have fun, be successful and take care of my family,” Faulk said. “If I left a mark on the NFL or made a big name for myself, all of that was extra. But I made sure I respected the game, had fun playing it, took care of my family and hoped I walked away from the game the same way I walked in: healthy, happy, with an understanding that this game went on before me and it will go on after.”

Yes, the game has and will continue to go on without Marshall Faulk. But the one thing this weekend will provide that can’t be accounted for is the simple fact that while the game will go on, Faulk will never be forgotten.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters featured article: A ‘Malign Intellectual Subculture’ – George Monbiot Smears Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger And Media Lens.

St. Louis Rams : News