By Ron Borges, Globe Staff, 2/3/2002

EW ORLEANS - The Super Bowl history of the Patriots is not a good one, and on paper it would not appear anything will happen today to alter that.

They will be facing the most potent offense in football when they trot onto the field at the Superdome, and things won't be much better when the ball changes hands, because St. Louis has the third-rated defense in the NFL while the Patriots have a slug-it-out offense that has struggled in recent weeks to score.

Be that as it may, the Rams have problems of their own, and according to someone who has coached against both teams, those problems start with their most dangerous player: quarterback Kurt Warner.

''The quarterback is pretty accurate, but the quarterback is not playing real well right now,'' said New York Jets coach Herman Edwards. ''He's obviously not playing at the same rate he was earlier this year because they're running the ball much more.

''If New England decides to blitz, he'll have to get the ball out of his hands quickly. They're going to mix it up on the quarterback, blitzing some and dropping off some. Now, he's a smart player. He's seen everything you can throw at him. It's just a matter of the matchups. When they throw it, can you tackle a guy after he catches the ball?

''That's the problem you have if you start blitzing and things of that nature. You put those guys in one-on-one situations where they have to tackle the receiver, because if they miss the tackle, it becomes a big play.''

That has been St. Louis's game for three years, and it will be again tonight. The Rams will spread the field, trying to force mismatches where their speed overwhelms the opponent or one-on-one situations where there is no safety help in the event of a missed tackle.

Either scenario is fatal to a defense, because Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, and Az-Zahir Hakim all have the speed to go deep if the slightest mistake is made, a fact the Patriots well understand.

''We have to play together as a team,'' Patriots cornerback Ty Law said. ''We don't want to get into a footrace with those guys. They have too much speed.''

The Patriots know they can't win footraces, so they have to avoid them with blitzes that get to Warner before he can unload. But if they fail to reach him in time, he could destroy them. That is the kind of pressure the Rams' passing game puts on you.

The other problem with trying to blitz is that the Rams will often spread running back Marshall Faulk wide, and when they do, he is as good a receiver as they have. This will force the Patriots to cover him with an additional defensive back because they really have no linebacker who can stay with him for long. When the Rams spread their formation that way, they force the defense into situations that are difficult to survive.

''He's two-headed, there's no doubt,'' Edwards said of Faulk. ''When you get him in space, you have problems because he can make the guys miss. There are some matchup problems when you put a linebacker on him where he wins those.

''But the first thing with Faulk is you have to stop him from running. You have to stop 28. If you don't stop 28, forget it. You are not going to win. It all starts with him. If you do, the task is not so difficult, but if they get that running game going with him, then it becomes tough because all of a sudden you add an eighth guy [safety Lawyer Milloy] in the box, and now you're asking your corners to play a little bit of man-to-man, and that's where you get burned.

''But if you keep them in front of you and don't let them behind you, they get frustrated, because when they throw the ball, they would like to hit the 20-yard in-cuts where a guy misses a tackle and all of a sudden he's out of the back end for a 30- or 40-yard gain. That's how they operate.''

Perhaps New England can stop that, but in their first meeting, Warner threw for 401 yards on a slower field when he was not having the best of nights (two interceptions). That is encouraging to some Patriots fans, because the Rams' few defeats have come when they turned the ball over.

But the fact is, even with those turnovers in the first meeting, St. Louis did what it wanted offensively when it needed to, both at the end of the first half and at the end of the game. That has to change, or the Patriots will have no chance.

One way for the Patriots to change that is to get something more out of their offense. Not necessarily an explosion of points, but ball control that keeps St. Louis's offense in the one place where it is least dangerous: on the sideline.

To do that, New England must run the ball more effectively than it has recently and must get yardage after the catch on the short slip screens and other quick routes that are really no more than extended handoffs.

In other words, the Patriots have to do what Edwards says they do best.

''They are basically a team that just tries to hang around,'' he said. ''When you look at them on paper, and you look at Pro Bowl players or whatever you want to look at, they don't mount up to a lot of teams. But they play very, very good as a football team. They use all their weapons.

''They play it close to the vest, keep the game close, and basically always find a way to win. They're dangerous. They know what they're getting ready to deal with. They know no one really expects them to win anyway, so they can just go in there and play the game because it doesn't really matter. The pressure is on St. Louis.''

If the Patriots can keep it there with a ball-control offense and a defense that doesn't give up the big play, they can make this a game. But if they get burned early, Super Bowl XXXVI has the makings of a five-alarm fire no one can put out.