DATE: Friday, November 28, 1997             TAG: 9711280160

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JIM DUCIBELLA, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   65 lines

VERMEIL GLAD TO BE BACK IN THE NFL, EVEN WITH 2-10 RAMS

Ask Dick Vermeil the obvious - whether pro football players are better today or the last time he was a head coach, 14 years ago - and you might be stunned at the reply.

``They've surprised me; it's been all positive,'' said Vermeil, who left the broadcast booth last spring to take over the St. Louis Rams. ``All I heard were rumors about guys being selfish and worried about their contracts. But the attitude here was super from the start, and it remains super. . . . These guys have a good work ethic and are resilient, maybe more resilient than the older guys.''

This from a coach whose youthful team is 2-10 entering Sunday's game against the Washington Redskins. This from a coach who just spent an agonizing week waiving running back Lawrence Phillips, a budding star on the field, a Hall-of-Fame pain in the neck off it. Missed practices. Missed meetings. An estimated 50 fines.

This from a coach who sounded genuinely disappointed that his calls to other teams trying to get Phillips a tryout have so far fallen on deaf ears. Unlike Mike Ditka in New Orleans, who recently admitted that ``maybe the game has passed me by,'' Vermeil has no such reservations.

``I felt for him, can understand where it comes from,'' Vermeil said. ``Other than that, I haven't had those same thoughts.

``Players used to do a hell of a lot more weird things in the old days than they do today. Players today are smarter, more sophisticated, than they ever were. There aren't nearly as many drug and alcohol problems as there were before; except now, everyone reads about it.

``I used to have police tell me, `I just took your middle linebacker home. Tell him to quit drinking.' I had that happen with coaches, too. Cocaine problems? Steroid problems? It was a joke. The game's much cleaner now than before.''

Vermeil's decision to return to coaching after such a long absence sent shock waves through the industry. Wasn't he an emotional madman in Philadelphia who rarely went home during the season, who religiously worked through night after night, who wept on the sidelines at the drop of a chinstrap? Wasn't it Vermeil who cried ``burnout'' the day he resigned? How would he cope with the ``new'' NFL?

The first thing he did was dump some of the responsibilities he shouldered with the Eagles. Instead of agonizing over a game plan week after week, Vermeil named quarterbacks coach Jerry Rhome and line coach Jim Hanifan co-offensive coordinators.

``I do just enough with the offense to screw it up,'' he jokes.

He also changed his lifestyle, though on the surface it might not seem that way.

``I got home at 12:45 last night,'' Vermeil said Wednesday. ``I never went home in the past. I'm not sleeping in my office like I used to. And I've told my coaches I don't want them in here after 1 o'clock in the morning.''

Perhaps because of his tenure as a football analyst, Vermeil comes across as brutally, refreshingly honest in his evaluation of his staff and his team.

``I anticipated us winning more games,'' he says. ``Our goal was to win seven; that's now out of reach. Someone asked what we were doing right. The only thing that's right is when you're winning. When you're not, it's always the coach's fault. I take that responsibility. We haven't done a good enough job.

``We've been in games until the final play. Two weeks ago, we had an open post pattern we didn't complete. Last week, we were first-and-goal on the two, and didn't get it in. We don't deserve to win.

``Overall, there's a lot of character on this team, We have good people, maybe too good. Maybe we need some horses' rear ends.''

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