Wannstedt sees some of late-'80s Niners in Rams.(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

A day later and a half-continent away, Dave Wannstedt's head was still spinning over the offense that couldn't be stopped.

"You know what I had flashbacks to?" Wannstedt said Monday. "That San Francisco offense of the late 1980s. The one where Joe Montana could get it to Roger Craig, Tom Rathman, Jerry Rice, John Taylor, Brent Jones. You could try to stop a few of them, but you can't stop all of them. It's pick your poison."

And so it was with a Rams offense featuring Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Az-Zahir Hakim, Ricky Proehl.

Yes, the 42-10 loss was rotten, embarrassing, patheticname your adjective. Yes, the coaching was timid, vanilla, not nearly as aggressive or daring as circumstances dictated. But before getting overly worked up about the Dolphins' performance at St. Louis, remember things could be worse. You could have woken up Monday in Indianapolis.

So step back, take a deep breath and repeat after me: Sunday wasn't a good day for the Dolphins, but it wasn't all that bad. It wasn't a conference loss. It wasn't a division loss. For perspective, all you had to do was look across the AFC East at the more-stunned Colts.

It's one thing to get drilled by high-octane, 16-cylinder talent and a team that could be working on a Super Bowl three-peat if not for untimely injuries to Warner and Faulk last year. It's another to get drilled by a backup quarterback named Tom Brady, a Faulk named Kevin and the two-bit Patriots.

This was a case where there was less shame in losing 42-10 than 44-13. The Dolphins had a bad day against a great team. The Colts had a bad day against a team that's been pathetic, one without quarterback Drew Bledsoe.