JIM EVERETT IS : AWAITING THE CALL : Rams Prefer Not to Rush Him, but Touted Passer Wants Future to Be Now

NEW ORLEANS--There’s a kid who has been following Ram Coach John Robinson around for weeks now, tugging at the tail of every shirt Robinson puts on.

Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New Orleans. The coach can’t turn around without tripping over the kid.

“When?” the kid keeps asking.

“Soon,” the coach keeps saying.

“When’s soon?” the kid says.

“When I say it’s soon,” the coach answers.

The kid is Jim Everett, and he has been the Ram quarterback of the future for only six weeks now. The thing is, the Rams have not recently had a quarterback of the future like this one.

Now, quarterbacks of the past they’ve had plenty of. Torn ligaments and degenerative disks they can tell you about.

But what of a truly great one like Everett, for whom the Rams mortgaged the farm last Sept. 18 in a five-of-ours-for-one-of-yours deal with the Houston Oilers?

How long has it been since the Rams had the best quarterback in the college draft to run their offense?

It’s a problem, all right. Here the Rams are, nine weeks into the season with the NFL’s worst passing offense and the one guy that can do something about it sitting on the bench.

Robinson would just love to get Everett into the game plan. But he can’t. Not yet. Not now, he says. If Robinson threw this kid in too early and messed up a perfectly great career, how might he be remembered in coaching history? Some people still haven’t forgiven him for Dieter Brock.

“I’d love to have a midweek game in Fresno and play (Everett) the whole game with our B team,” Robinson said. “But right now we’re absorbed in the middle of a divisional race.”

As it is, Everett can’t even get any practice time these days. All the prime-time Sunday stuff is being shared equally by starter Steve Dils and Robinson’s new long relief man, Steve Bartkowski.

Everett plays mostly on the scout team. Robinson has devised a sequence of eight plays for him, should Everett ever be needed in a game.

A few weeks ago, the need seemed greater than ever, with Bartkowski’s right knee such a question.

But despite some homely passing numbers, Robinson has been impressed with Dils in recent wins over Atlanta and Chicago. It may have pushed Everett’s debut back even further.

Everett and Robinson talked about the subject recently.

“I know some people want to see me get in,” Everett said Wednesday after practice at the Superdome, where the Rams are preparing for Sunday’s game with the New Orleans Saints. “And I want in just as bad. But Robinson is a good coach; he has the record to prove it. But being patient is hard to be at times.”

The interesting quality about Everett is that he does not conduct himself as a rookie should.

“Jim’s got a tremendous amount of poise,” Dils said. “I think that’s because he’s old for a rookie. He’s almost 24 (in January). There’s more maturity. He fits in real well.”

In fact, Everett has been more than Robinson ever dreamed. The physical skills are obvious. Everett is 6-5--almost two Pat Hadens, some cynical Ram fans might say--and has an arm that . . . well, Dils says he wouldn’t dare get into a throwing contest with him.

Everett, late of Purdue, was considered by many experts to be the top college quarterback last season, although another quarterback in the Big Ten, Chuck Long of Iowa, got more publicity.

Yet it was Everett who led the nation in total offense as a senior and Everett who was the first quarterback taken in the NFL’s college draft, the third pick overall.

There is also a streak that runs through Everett that Robinson had hoped for but had not counted on.

“He has natural leadership qualities,” Robinson said. “There’s only been three or four guys like that that I’ve been around: Dennis Harrah, Ken Stabler, Dan Fouts.”

Everett, from the first day, has worked his way into the Ram family.

Like any good politician, he has reached out and touched his constituency. Without coming off as pushy or abrasive, Everett has subtly and systematically courted members of the offensive line, his life-blood for the next 10 years.

Was that really the rookie Everett out on Bourbon Street with the veteran Harrah the other night?

Everett knows how to work a crowd, to get inside, to make friends and influence people.

“I was worried about a Mr. Slick,” Robinson said. “But he’s a natural.”

If what Everett does gets out of control, they call it cockiness.

But Everett walks a fine line that separates a leader from a loudmouth.

“If there was a cliff and going over it meant being cocky, I think I would know how to get to the edge and get back without going over it,” Everett said. “In this position, if you’re not confident in yourself, no one will be. There are cheerleaders and then some guys that don’t have to say a word, but they’re leaders.”

Everett said he learned how to walk that line from his parents, both of whom are educators. Everett’s father is a professor at the University of New Mexico, and his mother is a special education teacher in Albuquerque.

He learned from an early age what it meant to set goals and achieve them while maintaining poise and dignity.

“They raised us to do well at whatever we did,” said Everett, who has an older sister, Jackie. “They expected good grades. They expected a lot from my sister and me. But they also expected us to be good people.”

He remembers his early days in organized football.

“My parents used to sit beyond the end zone, on blankets,” Everett said. “They didn’t see much of the game. They didn’t like to be around other parents who were screaming at the other kids. I enjoyed that. Now, my dad likes to write stuff down after a game and talk to me about it. Once in a while, I just have to say ‘Dad, that’s enough of that.’ ”

His parents, too, instilled in their son what it means to persevere.

How else would you explain Everett’s dogged struggle to become a quarterback?

Everett did not become a starting quarterback at Albuquerque’s El Dorado High School until his senior season because of a team rule that prohibited underclassmen from playing the position.

Only Purdue and Stanford recruited him as a quarterback. Other schools saw him as a defensive end or tight end.

Leon Burtnett, who resigned Thursday as head coach at Purdue, was the team’s defensive coordinator when Everett was a freshman. He tried to talk Everett into becoming a defensive end.

Everett wouldn’t think of it.

He sat on the bench behind Scott Campbell for most of his first two seasons. Everett got a couple of chances as a sophomore but didn’t make the most of them.

Again, there were doubts about his ability.

“There was a coach there that didn’t like me, and vice versa,” Everett said. “He had no faith in me. There was a time he didn’t talk to me for three weeks during my sophomore season. He flat out thought I had no ability to play quarterback. I didn’t like the way he just gave up.”

Everett, though, had no thoughts of giving up. Or changing positions.

“I just thought I’d like to play quarterback,” he said. “I thought I could handle it. Like my parents, I don’t like to fail very much. And when someone’s telling you they want you to change things, they’re saying you failed. It gave me motivation to work harder.

“Maybe I was at a point in my life that was critical, where I had to be my own provider. But here were these experts saying these things about me. I just realized that in life, you’re going to have some setbacks. You have to look at them as temporary. Great things don’t come easily.”

Funny, but no one was asking Everett to become a nose tackle in 1984, his junior season, when he completed 58% of his passes for 3,256 yards. Or in 1985 when, as a senior, he threw for 3,651 yards and 23 touchdowns.

Everett laughs now at the idea of his changing positions.

“If I would have moved, I would have worked hard at it,” he said. “But I don’t know if I’d be doing it anymore.”

As it is, Everett is expected to spend at least the next four years with the Rams, collecting a $2.55-million salary, not including incentives. But when will the Rams start collecting?

Everett, of course, thinks he’s ready.

But then, so did John Elway when he was a rookie with the Denver Broncos in 1983.

“I’m not naive to not know the history of quarterbacks,” Everett said. “But the things that happened with Elway, that was different. He didn’t have Eric Dickerson.”

The coach, meanwhile, looks at the kid as if he’s some present he swore not to open until Christmas.

“The right environment is having him in training camp and preseason games,” Robinson said. “The wrong environment would be putting the pressures of a division race on his shoulders.”

Ram Notes Fullback Hokie Gajan of the New Orleans Saints is playing the part of Eric Dickerson in his team’s scout drills this week. And although Gajan may not run like Dickerson, he tried to look like him by wearing goggles. . . . The Rams’ stay in New Orleans will cost the team about $25,000. . . . Saint quarterback Bobby Hebert, who is on injured reserve with a foot injury, is practicing with the team and may be activated this week.