ST. LOUIS -- To a man, St. Louis defensive players and coaches politely declined after Sunday's victory to disclose the nomenclature for the signature play in the Rams' third straight win of the season, a sack that turned a tie game into a laugher.

Through 45 minutes of interrogation, they tiptoed around every query, fidgeting at times from one foot to another, but consistently biting their tongues. Middle linebacker London Fletcher laughed before offering a non-answer. Cornerback Dexter McCleon turned mute. Defensive tackle Brian Young hustled out to meet his family and friends. And defensive coordinator Lovie Smith stopped just shy of invoking his fifth-amendment privilege.

	Aeneas Williams and his Rams teammates limited the Miami Dolphins to 10 points.

Had you driven slivers of bamboo underneath their fingernails, strapped them to the rack, St. Louis defenders might have guarded the terminology for the middle blitz as if it were the combination to the Fort Knox vault. It was as if secret agent status had suddenly been bestowed on the Rams defensive players.

So why the overblown focus on one stinkin' play, especially when the Rams dispatched Miami by a seemingly effortless 42-10 final, and when St. Louis served notice with the lopsided win that it has set its sights on a second Super Bowl berth in three seasons? Why fret over one defensive golden moment when the explosive Rams offensive attack posted enough points to assure St. Louis its biggest victory margin since a 59-16 rout of Atlanta on Nov. 10, 1996?

Two reasons: The play, on which Fletcher sacked Dolphins quarterback Jay Fiedler and forced a fumble that McCleon recovered 24 yards behind the original line of scrimmage, was indicative of a St. Louis defense that now believes it can turn around momentum. And it reinforced the growing confidence of a unit, deservedly maligned in 2000, which feels its newfound aggression will force significant turnovers over the course of this year.

"What we want," said Fletcher, "is for people to have to take notice of us. No, maybe not the same way they notice our offense, because those guys make your eyes bug out, they are so good. But we don't want to just be the stepchildren of this team, either, you know? So if folks around the league start saying now, 'Hey, their defense can play a little, too,' then we're doing what we want to do. And word will start getting around. But we have to keep making the kind of big plays we made today."

On an afternoon when the formerly porous Rams kept the Dolphins out of the end zone for the final 47 minutes, no play was bigger than the Fletcher sack, which clearly turned the impetus. From that juncture on, the Dolphins managed just three points, and Fiedler acknowledged the turnover sucked most of the wind from Miami's sails.

Setting the stage: The game was tied 7-7, the Dolphins having answered a game-opening touchdown drive by the Rams with a 64-yard scoring series of their own, and had a third-and-goal from the St. Louis six-yard line. At that point the Miami defense, temporarily knocked on its heels by the Rams scoring drive on the opening possession, had recovered and forced two consecutive punts.

Any kind of score by the Dolphins, even a field goal, and the Rams would have been in the unusual position of playing from behind.

But just before the third-down play, the St. Louis defense jumped into a "double eagle" front, with tackles covering both the Miami guards. As the ball was snapped, Fletcher timed his blitz perfectly, hitting the "A gap" between Miami center Tim Ruddy and right guard Todd Perry, and bursting untouched into the Dolphins backfield. Because strong safety Adam Archuleta had faked a blitz, Miami tailback Lamar Smith was forced into a decision, whether to block the man who was coming or the one who wasn't.

And, unfortunately for the Dolphins, he made the wrong choice.

Fletcher collided unimpeded with Fiedler, like a runaway freight train with its brake lines severed, and knocked the ball loose. At the conclusion of the pile of humanity scrambling for the ball, McCleon fell on it. The loss on the sack was for nine yards, the fumble for an additional minus-15 yards.

Miami coach Dave Wannstedt, when asked about the play, suggested that maybe Fiedler should have gotten rid of the ball. When he reviews the videotape on Monday, he'll likely change his mind, since Fletcher looked like a man shot out of a cannon and the Dolphins quarterback was such an easy target that he had zero time to react to the blitz.

Ruddy noted that, because the Rams defensive tackles didn't go into the "double eagle" look until just before the snap, the Miami blockers were confused. Half the line blocked one defensive front and half blocked the wrong one. The result was chaos promulgated by the Rams' late shift and opportune deployment of a scheme Miami hadn't seen.

"I took the snap," said Fiedler, "and there he was, right in my face, on me just like that. They 'stemed into the front late and I was expecting him to be picked up."

He wasn't.

Just eight minutes prior to the blitz, Fletcher had committed a cardinal error, abetting the Dolphins touchdown drive by drawing a 15-yard personal foul penalty for pummeling Miami fullback Deon Dyer after the whistle. Dyer charged Fletcher with "trying to tear (my) eyes out, man."

With the blitz play, though, Fletcher tore the Dolphins hearts out.

From third-and-goal for the Dolphins the situation became a first down for the Rams at their own 30-yard line. Four plays later, Rams tailback Marshall Faulk scored on a 10-yard swing pass from Kurt Warner to culminate a lightning-quick 70-yard possession, and the floodgates had opened for good. As they say in tennis: Game, set, match.

Against a Dolphins defense that is one of the few in the league with sufficient personnel to challenge St. Louis' mind-boggling assortment of formations and motions, the Rams scored touchdowns on four of their next five possessions.

	“	What we want is for people to have to take notice of us. No, maybe not the same way they notice our offense, because those guys make your eyes bug out, they are so good. But we don't want to just be the stepchildren of this team, either, you know? ”
		— London Fletcher

Warner was nothing short of magnificent, hitting 24 of 31 passes for 328 yards and four touchdowns against one of the NFL's premier secondaries. His 150.3 passer efficiency rating for the game was just eight points short of statistical perfection in the convoluted formula. Six different Rams receivers had at least three catches each. The incomparable Marshall Faulk totaled 160 yards from scrimmage and scored three touchdowns.

Warner and Faulk hooked up on the afternoon's other most memorable play, a one-yard touchdown pass on the final play of the first half, when the quarterback bought himself barely enough time to spot the tailback in the middle of the end zone. The only receiver on the play, Faulk made his scoring catch among three Dolphins defenders, boosting the Rams into a 21-10 lead an intermission.

Still, the play about which the Rams locker room was abuzz was Fletcher's sack. "There is huge and there is very huge," said St. Louis defensive line coach Bill Kollar. "Let me tell you, that one was very huge. It's probably a 14-point swing there because, given the blitz we had on, if London doesn't sack the guy, we're pretty vulnerable in the back end."

Realistically, the chances are that, without the Fletcher sack and forced fumble, the Rams offense probably would have scored enough points to win. But this is a St. Louis team that came to realize a year ago that a high-octane offense can still leave the Super Bowl tank empty. For the entire offseason, the emphasis was on improving the defense, and the early indications are that the unit is coming along nicely.

Said free safety Kim Herring, one of five starters acquired via free agency or trades in the offseason, on a unit that has eight new starters overall: "We're understanding more and more every week what Lovie wants from us. It takes a while, especially when you have so many new guys from so many different places, but we're getting there. And Lovie is calling some great stuff, let me tell you."

Imported from Tampa Bay, and having brought the Buccaneers' trademark "two deep" zone scheme with him, Smith has earned the esteem of his charges. And the blitz call on Sunday won't hurt the veterans' burgeoning regard for their new boss. That particular blitz was part of the St. Louis defensive game plan in each of the team's first two games.

The first time Smith actually called that alignment and blitz? You guessed it, on Sunday afternoon, when he dipped deep into his bag of tricks.

"One thing we're preaching is turnovers," Smith said. "We just feel like, if you continue to give great effort, the ball is going to be on the ground a lot. But the other thing is that you have to force turnovers, too. You can't just count on them happening. That was just a case of us feeling like we knew what (the Dolphins) were going to do, and taking a shot that we had something in our game plan to blow it up.

"It was one play, that's all, but it was a big one."

Big enough that, on a day of gaudy plays for the Rams offense, it was the one sequence that players from both St. Louis units spoke the most about. As long, of course, as you didn't ask them for the name of the blitz.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.