ST. LOUIS -- Soft?

The mere mention of the word eats at St. Louis Rams coach Mike Martz, enough that he fires back at anyone who dares to say his team has the firmness of a baby's butt. It also burns his players.

Marshall Faulk and the Rams bullied their way to the Super Bowl with a physical second half.(AP)

So what better way to show the so-called finesse Rams can play that supposed tough-guy brand of football than on the biggest stage of Martz's young coaching career?

In his first NFC Championship Game, with starting quarterback Kurt Warner playing with sore ribs, Martz went to their power game on offense -- as in Marshall Faulk -- and then put the game into the hands of his defense in the second half.

The result was a 29-24 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles that puts the Rams (16-2) into next Sunday's Super Bowl against the surprising New England Patriots at the Superdome in New Orleans. After falling behind 17-13 at the half, the Rams dominated the second half, especially on defense, much to the delight of the crowd at the newly named Edward Jones Dome.

Defensive coordinator Lovie Smith's unit did not allow a first down in the second half until there was five minutes, 30 seconds left in the game, and by then, the Rams were on their way to their second Super Bowl in three years, their first under Martz.

You would think an attack-first coach like Martz would go to a spread offense after trailing at the half. Instead, Martz proved a point by pounding the ball in the third quarter with Faulk. He opened the second half with seven consecutive carries.

After the game, someone asked Martz, the pass-first coach, the last time he ran seven consecutive running plays.

He laughed.

"He's never done that before," Warner said interrupting. "Hopefully, he will never do that again. Just kidding."

"Pretty good one to do that, don't you think?" Martz said.

Peeling a label? The Rams took this one off the package, crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage -- hopefully, they say, for good.

"I'm going to the Super Bowl, and those people who say we're soft are going to be watching," Rams safety Kim Herring said. "There's not too much more I can say about that. People are going to say what they want to say. They're going to be watching us on the big screen out there. They can call me any names they want, but we're in the big game. They can call me mother for all I care. Soft? I don't think so."

"We're not a soft team, you have to be kidding me," defensive tackle Jeff Zgonina said. "Marshall was running through people. The O-line just rolling them over. I guess they have to find some flaw in us."

Faulk rushed for 159 yards on 31 carries and scored two touchdowns, both on 1-yard runs, as the Rams' offensive line pushed around what was expected to be a physical Philadelphia defense. Yes, the Rams can still throw it around with the best of them, but like Martz has insisted all year long, this is anything but a soft team.

Soft teams don't dominate physical teams the way the Rams did Sunday afternoon. This game proves the Rams just might be the most complete playoff team in years, even better than the 1999 Rams who won the Super Bowl. That team didn't have the defense this team has, nor could it root out defensive lines the way this team did against the Eagles.

Maybe, once and for all, this will also end all that talk a pass-first team can't win the battle of the two lines. St. Louis owned that battle for the entire second half after a not-so-great first half, especially by the defense.

The Eagles gained 182 yards in the first half in taking the 17-13 lead. But in the second half, the Rams held Philadelphia to 74 yards, just 12 in the third quarter.

Big adjustments, right?

"No," safety Adam Archuleta said. "We run the same things all the time, and we didn't change in the second half. We just played what was called better."

The Rams used a four-man rush, dropping seven, for most of the first half and got little pressure on Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. In the second half, the Rams blitzed a tad bit more, but mostly they got to McNabb with their four-man front, sacking him three times.

The result was three consecutive three-and-outs to start the half, giving the offense a chance to come alive and take the lead 22-17 after three quarters. Faulk made it 29-17 with his second touchdown run with 6:55 left in the fourth quarter, and the Eagles still hadn't made a first down in the half up until that point.

In the first half, both teams played it conservatively on defense, which might be why there were 30 points scored.

The Eagles, known for their blitz-frenzy style under coordinator Jim Johnson, rushed mostly four men on nearly every play, playing soft coverage behind the front.

"I really didn't think they blitzed us as much," said Warner, who took a pain-killing injection before the game because of his sore ribs. "They did some zone dogs, but they didn't do as many corner blitzes or safety blitzes as they did the first time we played them (in the opener). I guess that surprised me a bit."

The Rams, normally a four-man rush team, used the same approach. And it nearly killed them.

They looked ... soft. Oops, sorry.

With little pressure on McNabb in the first half, the Eagles quarterback was able to pick apart the Rams' two-deep zone. Using a short-passing game, McNabb completed 11-of-17 for 106 yards and one touchdown in the half.

If the Rams' intent was to keep him in the pocket, it worked. He ran twice for 15 yards. But his ability to stand in and scan the field allowed him to continually pick up his tight end as Chad Lewis caught four passes for 42 yards.

The Rams, the league's highest-scoring offense during the regular season, got a gift on the first possession of the game when McNabb fumbled and Brian Young recovered at the Philadelphia 21.

Five plays later, Warner hit Isaac Bruce for a 5-yard touchdown and a 7-0 lead. It looked like it might be a blowout, just like the oddsmakers predicted in making the Rams a 12-point favorite.

The Eagles held off that initial thrust of energy by the Rams, cut the lead to 7-3 and then -- after a 27-yard field goal by Jeff Wilkins made it 10-3 St. Louis -- the Eagles tied it on a 1-yard run by Duce Staley.

St. Louis made it 13-10 on a 39-yard field goal with 3:53 left in the first half, but the Eagles were able to move to the lead when McNabb hit Todd Pinkston with a 12-yard touchdown pass with 46 seconds left.

That changed in the second half when the Rams decided they needed to pressure McNabb. They didn't go to an all-out blitz scheme, but they did come more than in the first half.

The Rams owned the third quarter, scoring nine points to take the 22-17 lead, but the domination of the quarter was far more than that. The Rams controlled the ball for 12:37 in the quarter to 2:23 for the Eagles.

St. Louis ran 21 plays for 115 yards to five plays for 14 yards for the Eagles as St. Louis took a 22-17 third-quarter lead.

"They did a great job of keeping our defense on the field and our offense off the field," Staley said. "When you don't have the ball, you don't gain any yardage."

Ball control? The Rams? The finesse, play-like-it's-a-game-of-two-touch Rams won the possession battle in a big way?

That's not supposed to happen, is it?

"People think just because we spread it out on offense that we aren't a tough team," Herring said. "That's just being stupid. We can run the ball when we have to. We can play good defense when we need to. It's not like people push us around."

That's because they are not soft. They are explosive on offense and can put up points in a hurry. But if the situation calls for a slugfest, where they are asked to match a more physical team blow for blow, the Rams showed Sunday they're up to the task.

The Eagles were the team that left beaten up, wondering what that was that ran over them, around them and through them. The Eagles did get a chance late after McNabb's score, but he was intercepted on their final possession by Aeneas Williams to send the Rams to the Super Bowl.

They will head there minus a label they never thought they deserved in the first place.

"I cannot care less what they call us," Rams offensive tackle Orlando Pace said. "Once we get that ring ... I don't know too many soft teams who have won the Super Bowl."

Said Herring: "I've told our guys that they used to say that soft stuff about the 49ers, too. Look how many rings they've got."