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ST. LOUIS -- Of the 11 players who started for the St. Louis defense here on Sunday afternoon, nine weren't with the franchise when the Rams brought home the Super Bowl title in 2000, and a half-dozen weren't even in the league at the time.

After the Rams secured a first-round playoff bye and grabbed the inside track on home-field advantage in the NFC -- thanks to Philadelphia's loss -- with a 27-10 manhandling of the Cincinnati Bengals, it was difficult to locate a St. Louis defender with historical perspective. Unless, that is, you happened to wander past the locker stall of end Grant Wistrom, a starter on the Super Bowl XXXIV unit and one of the notable standouts of the Sunday victory.

Asked to compare the championship defense with an aggressive unit that held Cincinnati to a single touchdown, Wistrom strongly suggested this year's outfit is superior. The 1999 defense, he acknowledged, was more an afterthought. The 2003 bunch is more a factor in the success of a team that is more balanced than its recent predecessors.

A week off

ST. LOUIS -- Having secured the division championship a week earlier, the St. Louis Rams still had a sense of purpose on Sunday, with head coach Mike Martz and some of the older veterans stressing before the contest the importance of a first-round playoff bye. After the Rams' victory, those same people reiterated how key it is to have gained a week off after the conclusion of the regular season. "You can't underestimate it," said free safety Aeneas Williams. "You let everybody go out and beat themselves up in that (wild card) round, and you're home getting healthier, and healing up some wounds. It's huge, believe me, huge." Martz said that he will handle the opening week of the playoffs in the same manner that he treats a bye during the regular season. That means St. Louis players will lift weights and run but will not get onto the practice field until the Monday directly preceding their first postseason appearance. "We want to be fresh and fast when we start (preparing for) the playoffs," Martz said. St. Louis is a relatively healthy team but the addition rest time could be key to the return of wide receiver Isaac Bruce, who sat out Sunday's victory with a high ankle sprain, and who might not play in next week's finale against the Detroit Lions. Bruce worked out on the Edwards Jones Stadium surface hours before the matchup with the Bengals, insisted to Martz he could play, but was nonetheless inactivated. "Our whole thing all year is to not bring guys back (from injuries) too soon," Martz said. "And we're not going to change that. That's why getting the first-round bye is so big for us and for any other team. This is a long season and to get time off like that, to be able to mend up and be mentally ready too, is a big deal." -- Len Pasquarelli

"When we won the Super Bowl," said Wistrom, "we had a very high (statistical) ranking, and part of the reason was that our offense was always ahead 14-0 or 21-0 early in almost every game, and (opponents) were forced to play catch-up. This is a much more complete team, a more flexible defense, and we're going out and winning some games."

That was certainly the case Sunday when, facing a Bengals offense that ranked 11th in the league in both yards gained and points scored, the Rams permitted a paltry 286 yards and harassed Cincinnati quarterback Jon Kitna into three interceptions.

The Bengals, who slipped to 8-7, no longer control their postseason destiny. Cincinnati must defeat Cleveland at Paul Brown Stadium next Sunday afternoon, then have the Pittsburgh Steelers upset the Baltimore Ravens later in the evening, to grab its first divisional crown since 1990.

On the flip side, the victory again demonstrated that the 2003 Rams are not a team dependent on the offensive doodlings of head coach Mike Martz to win games, as they have been in the past. St. Louis got two touchdown passes from Marc Bulger, 10 catches for 124 yards from Torry Holt, a 121-yard performance by Marshall Faulk and an outstanding effort from the offensive line.

The Rams converted on 10 of 16 third-down situations, with Bulger showing uncanny accuracy in the clutch on an afternoon when he clearly missed wideout Isaac Bruce, who was sidelined by a high ankle sprain. The offensive line pummeled the Bengals in the fourth quarter, with Faulk pounding for 50 yards and Bulger throwing only four passes.

It was the defense, however, led by Wistrom's seven tackles and 2½ sacks, that supplied the most dominant moments in a franchise-record 14th straight home win.

It is defense for which statistics don't tell the entire story. The Rams ranked only No. 15 in total defense entering Sunday's game. But they led the NFL in takeaways, with 41, registered a plus-six in turnover-takeaway differential, and had surrendered just 20.6 points per outing.

More important, under highly regarded coordinator Lovie Smith, who is soon to become a very popular candidate for teams making head coaching changes, St. Louis has emerged as one of the NFL's more versatile defenses. A onetime devotee of the Tampa Bay "Cover 2" scheme and former Bucs linebackers assistant, Smith has expanded his package this year as the youthful Rams have grown up.

The result is a more aggressive and attacking assemblage.

When he hired Smith in 2001, Martz mandated a defense that mirrored the edgy style of his own offensive design, a mindset that pushed the envelope. There were hints of that in Smith's first two seasons but, this year, it is obvious the Rams' speed and flexibility now allow him plenty of options.

Prime example: In the Sunday victory, strong safety Adam Archuleta, still sulking over not being selected for the NFC Pro Bowl squad, lined up at four different positions. As usual, he mostly played close to the line of scrimmage, and he posted a team-best eight tackles while adding one quarterback pressure. But the third-year veteran, a former first-round draft choice who leads all safeties this year with five sacks, also added his first interception of the season and recorded a pass deflection.

	“	When we won the Super Bowl, we had a very high (statistical) ranking, and part of the reason was that our offense was always ahead 14-0 or 21-0 early in almost every game, and (opponents) were forced to play catch-up. This is a much more complete team, a more flexible defense, and we're going out and winning some games. ”
		— Grant Wistrom, Rams DE

"I would like to think that I'm still defining myself as a player," said Archuleta, viewed by the Bengals coming into the game as a pass-defense liability they could expose. "To some extent, this defense is like that, too, you know? But we're getting closer to knowing exactly what we have here. I think now that (Smith) has a better feel for all of us. At the beginning of the year, we were playing so many young guys, you just didn't know who could do what. What's happened lately, though, is that we've developed a sense of trust in each other now. And our coaches feel more comfortable with us."

That coming of age, the evolution of six starters with three seasons or fewer in the league, has heightened the discomfort of Rams opponents. Over the course of the season, Smith has increased the blitz quotient for his unit, tinkered with more coverages and inched his defenders closer to the line of scrimmage. As young cornerbacks Jerametrius Butler and Travis Fisher have improved, they have been given more responsibilities in single-coverage situations.

Picked on by Kitna for the Bengals' first touchdown Sunday, on a lob to the bigger Kelley Washington in the red zone, Butler perfectly diagnosed the same pass route later in the game and picked off the ball in the end zone. The theft ended the Bengals' final threat and served notice the St. Louis secondary, at least on the corners, won't be so easily exploited in the playoffs.

The safety spots -- where venerable former corners Aeneas Williams and Jason Sehorn, along with journeyman Rich Coady, play pass coverage when Archuleta sneaks up into the box -- could be suspect. But the multiple fronts and packages Smith has used might camouflage deficiencies in the interior secondary.

Martz went out of his way to lobby for Smith as a head coaching candidate, and he also noted the halftime adjustments made by his coordinator, often an underestimated element in any contest. In the second half against the Bengals, the Rams squeezed the line of scrimmage tighter, forcing the Cincinnati tailback duet of Corey Dillon and Rudi Johnson to the outside, while "bracketing" wideout Chad Johnson more than earlier.

With the alterations, a close game became a route. The Bengals were shut out over the final two quarters, gaining only 115 yards, and averaging 4.4 yards per snap, after registering 5.9 yards per play before intermission. The Bengals, who have seen some of the league's premier defenses in 2003 and moved the ball on many of them, seemed surprised by the Rams' domination.

In the St. Louis locker room, where the defense used to be only a diversion on a club accustomed to scoring 40-plus points per game, there was no such state of shock.

"We're pretty good and we're getting better," Wistrom said. "I think back to all of those shootouts that we used to be involved in, and I just shake my head, because that's not the sign of a complete team. This is a lot more fun. We've have young guys, players who didn't know how to close out a game earlier in the year, stepping up for us now. We're a real factor now and there's a lot of pride starting show on this defense."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. Click here to send Len a question for possible use on ESPNEWS.