Will Jets Get It Together Today Against Rams? : Football: New York is 0-3 and has real problems after beginning the season with high expectations.

To the vast disappointment of the New York Jets, they meet the downtrodden Rams today at Anaheim Stadium on basically equal footing, three weeks after the Jets began the season with division-title dreams.

The Rams are getting to know the AFC East quite well in a four-game, season-opening excursion through it. They are 1-2, and, given their 3-13 record last season, not altogether displeased.

Buffalo bombed them in Week 1, New England folded against them in Week 2 and Miami beat them in Week 3. Today, it’s the team that was supposed to be the division’s up-and-comer.

But the Jets, after earning a wild-card playoff berth in Coach Bruce Coslet’s first season, have lost their first three games.

“I think the Jets are a talented football team,” Ram Coach Chuck Knox said. “I think that’s why they were picked to contend with Buffalo in that Eastern division. And I think the people that predicted that were probably right.

“Some things have happened to them in these first three games. They’re talking about they’re going to be 1-3 after our game, and that’s what they were last year and they went on to go 8-8 and into the playoffs.”

Nobody is talking about the Rams going 8-8 and on to the playoffs.

Beyond the big picture, these are teams at polar ends of the league’s laughingstock brigade.

For example:

--The Jets are the league’s ranking underachiever for 1992. The Rams probably have overachieved.

--The Jets have, in Browning Nagle, a young quarterback who appears to have many big games ahead of him. The Rams have in Jim Everett a middle-aged quarterback who is playing as if most of his big games are behind him.

The 6-foot-3 Nagle, who made his NFL debut memorable with a 366-yard day against the Atlanta Falcons, missed last week’s game after bruising his hand two weeks ago against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but is expected to start today.

“He’s not a (Dan) Marino,” Ram cornerback Darryl Henley said of Nagel. “I don’t know who is. But he’s a quarterback who can throw the deep ball. He’s thrown that.

“He can throw the fade very well. I think this team throws fades really well. When you have tall receivers, that helps.

“I looked at the Pittsburgh game and the Atlanta game, and he was more comfortable just going downtown. I’m expecting him to do the same thing.”

--The Jets, in Coslet, 49, have a caustic, emotional coach with a knack for getting his biting comments blown into New York tabloid headlines.

The Rams, in Knox, have a 60-year-old coach with a knack for getting his comments forgotten minutes after he utters them.

--The Jets, one of the NFL’s best rushing teams last year,are averaging only 81.3 yards per game on the ground this season. The Rams, one of the better run-stopping defenses last year, are the lowest-rated run defenders in 1992, yielding an average of 161 yards per game.

--The Jets have one of the tallest sets of wide receivers in recent league memory, boasting three regulars 6-3 or taller. The Rams, after the shoulder injury that has sidelined 6-foot Todd Lyght, have a set of cornerbacks featuring three regulars 5-10 or shorter.

--The talent-laden Jets have lost games because they have given the ball away 10 times, have been outscored in the first half, 54-20, and have lost their best defensive player, sack-man Jeff Lageman, because of a knee injury. The Rams, who have been outscored in the first half, 44-7, have lost games because they are less talented than the teams they played.

Because of all this, today, with road games against the San Francisco 49ers, New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys in the next six games, and the Jets’ recent pattern of self-destruction, the Rams would seem to have one of their last chances to bob back to respectability.

“We have a lot of talent on this team,” Henley said. “And no one knows that, because we haven’t done it yet.

“That’s what I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for us to put together a game, not just for people but for ourselves.

“We’re a throw away here, we’re a run away here, we’re a block away from here, we’re a tackle away from there. You put it all together, then you’re close. You look at everything individually, you’re a long way.

“And I’m thinking, this will be our fourth game. We’ve only played three games, so I still think we can have a fine season, I really do.

“But it’s how soon. We have to have an urgency to get better fast, now, soon.”

Ram Notes

With the Rams expecting to draw their second consecutive crowd of fewer than 50,000, Chuck Knox said he understands teams must win before their stadiums start rocking with excitement.

In Seattle’s Kingdome, Knox’s Seahawks had a tremendous home-field noise advantage every week.

“The last game we played against New England (two weeks ago at Anaheim Stadium), we had them backed up down there, that end zone really created a lot of noise,” Knox said of the 40,402-person crowd that day. “But you know, winning creates that. You have to win to get that kind of attitude, get it going.

“That will come with winning. I’m not concerned about that right now. I know if we win, we put a quality product out there that’s winning, fans will come back.”