Farr Is Out to Prove Scouts Were Wrong : Pro football: Ram rookie defensive tackle, who was overlooked on draft day, is showing people he can do the job.

ANAHEIM — Deacon Jones watched D’Marco Farr’s debut as a Ram defensive tackle last August and wondered how so many NFL teams could have screwed up and overlooked him on draft day.

After all, it had happened before . . . to Jones.

Jones fooled a lot of scouts after he was taken in the 14th round of the 1961 draft by the Rams. A member of the Fearsome Foursome, he went on to play in seven Pro Bowls and earned induction into the Hall of Fame.

Now a commentator on Ram radio broadcasts, Jones watched Farr play in an exhibition game at Green Bay, turned to colleague Jack Snow and said: “I really like this kid. Why wasn’t he drafted?”

“It reminded me a lot of when I came into the league,” Jones said. “I might have gone in a lower round if the Rams hadn’t heard some rumblings that somebody else might take me.”

While sculptors won’t be carving a D’Marco Farr bust for the Hall of Fame, Farr has helped the Rams out of a serious jam this season.

The only rookie free agent to make the team’s active roster, Farr will start for the second consecutive week in place of injured Pro Bowl tackle Sean Gilbert.

“I still have to look in my locker every day to make sure my stuff is still there,” said Farr, the Pac-10 defensive lineman of the year as a senior at Washington. “I’m still a rookie, you know.”

In the new age of the NFL, Farr didn’t even have a 14th round to slip to last spring, as Jones did more than three decades ago. The draft ended after seven, and the scouts’ message was perfectly clear:

You’re too small.

Big mistake, Farr told them.

There just isn’t supposed to be a a market for 6-foot-1, 270-pound defensive tackles at this level, which is why Farr is one of the biggest surprises at Rams Park this season.

“You know, in this day, a lot of guys are playing only for the money,” Jones said. “But with D’Marco it’s different, it’s personal. He took it personally when he wasn’t drafted, and he’s showing the whole league they made a mistake on draft day.”

Farr’s size was an issue all the way back to his childhood, when his older brothers, Andre, who played football at UCLA, and Mario, picked on him.

Hooked on pro wrestling shows as a kid, Farr and his brothers often imitated what they watched on Saturday mornings. Andre “The Hulk” and Mario “The Basher” would gang up on D’Marco “The Dummy” and the brawl was on.

“Andre wouldn’t get into it until we provoked him,” Farr said. “Then he turned into the Hulk. Mario and I were always throwing each other around, and once in a while we would do the old sneak attack on Andre.”

Those maneuvers usually backfired on D’Marco. Nothing worse than a double-team from your older brothers, right?

“I was running for my life,” Farr said.

And when they caught him, he received the torture those poor slobs on the WWF get.

The most devastating hold Farr has survived? Perhaps the DDT made famous by Jake (The Snake) Roberts? How about Fritz Von Erich’s “Claw hold” or Hulk Hogan’s leg drop?

Nope, it was the dreaded figure-four leg lock.

“One night we were watching a movie and my brother had me in the figure-four,” Farr said. “He had me locked in for the whole two hours, the whole show. Every time I said a word, he put more pressure on it.”

Farr also made a fine pint-sized tackling dummy when Andre and Mario prepared for Pop Warner games on Sunday mornings.

“We would go in the garage, suit up and start smacking each other around in the garage while Mom was still asleep,” Farr said. “We’d break up all kinds of stuff. You had to learn to really be tough down there.”

Painful lessons too. Andre and Mario lined up D’Marco at one end of the garage and challenged him to make it to the other end. It was two-on-one, and it could get pretty ugly.

“I got to play the lonely running back and they got to play the big linebackers who come up to smack the little guy,” he said.

More than 10 years later, Farr is still lining up against bigger guys.

Last week, he went against New York Giants’ guard William Roberts (6-5, 292 pounds) and finished with three tackles and a deflected pass. On Sunday, Farr goes against Saints’ guard Jim Dombrowski (6-5, 300).

“The size of these guys is unbelievable,” Farr said. “I don’t know where they get them. They’re monsters.”

Farr thinks his size and quickness help him against bigger, slower linemen. Because he’s so low to the ground, guards who try to cut-block him often hit him in the waist instead of the knee, and he’s able to keep his balance and finish a play.

“Even with his height,” Jones said, “I think the kid could play linebacker with his quickness.

“Look at the Falcons, they have a couple small tackles, guys around 260. Guys like that are usually very, very tough and they pursue like hell. That’s one of D’Marco’s strongest assets.”

Near the end of training camp, Farr changed his jersey number from 94 to 75, his college number and the one worn by Jones in his Ram days.

The match was purely coincidental, but fitting nonetheless.

“I was watching one of those ESPN highlight films and there’s one segment with Deacon in it,” Farr said. “They show him making some plays, and he says, ‘If you don’t serve justice, you’re going to get kicked around the league.’

“It just always stuck out the way he said that, because if you don’t defend yourself, guys are going to push you around and keep running right at you.”

Jones laughed when told of Farr’s film studies.

“One of these days,” he said. “I’ll show D’Marco some real pass-rushing film.”