PRO FOOTBALL : Ellard Sees Bright Side to Big Loss : He’s All Smiles After 8 Catches Net 121 Yards

You almost had to remind Ram receiver Henry Ellard that his team had just lost to the Miami Dolphins, 37-31, in overtime Sunday in Anaheim Stadium.

Looking at Ellard’s face in the locker room afterward, you’d never know the Rams had just missed an opportunity to clinch the NFC West Division title for the second straight year.

All of Ellard’s smiling. All of his exuberance. Was this any way to act after a loss?

For Ellard it was.

“It’s hard to hide my enthusiasm,” Ellard said after catching 8 passes for 121 yards and a touchdown. “The way our passing game went and the way my game went, I guess I can smile about that. It’s a positive thing to look at.”

With Sunday’s performance, Ellard became the Rams’ leading receiver, with 31 receptions for 406 yards and 4 touchdowns. But here’s the real catch. He’s done it all in half a season.

Remember, Ellard missed the Rams’ first seven games because of his 89-day holdout. He caught his first pass of 1986 five weeks ago against the New Orleans Saints, so it has taken him only six games to take over the receiver leadership.

That may not be saying much for the receiving corps, but it says plenty about Ellard, the former Fresno State star who is playing his fourth season for the Rams.

“It’s nice to come back and lead the team,” Ellard said. “I was just hoping to have a good half-year and to show that, hey, we can do great things, especially with Jim Everett at quarterback. I hope it’s something (the Rams) consider when we start negotiations again.”

Those negotiations are on the shelf right now, but Ellard is hoping to start them up soon after the season. For now, he’s playing on a pay-per-game basis, drawing a about $10,000 a game.

The Rams got their money’s worth Sunday. Everett teamed with Ellard four times for 51 yards on the Rams’ first scoring drive, which ended with Mike Newberry’s fumble recovery for a touchdown early in the second period.

Early in the third quarter, Ellard, running a fly pattern down the right sideline, caught a 19-yard touchdown pass from Everett to cut the Dolphins’ lead to 21-14.

“That was supposed to be a quick screen (pass), but if the cornerback played up on me, the play changes to a fade,” Ellard said.

Dolphin defender Reyna Thompson was playing Ellard about two yards off the line of scrimmage, so the receiver sprinted down the sideline and caught Everett’s perfectly thrown pass in the end zone.

Ellard also had a 22-yard reception in the fourth quarter that gave the Rams a first down on the Miami 35-yard line and put them in position to score the tying touchdown.

Ellard’s 121 yards were eight short of his career-high game, which he achieved in eight receptions against New England four weeks ago. The most passes Ellard has caught in a game is nine (against San Francisco last year).

It’s no coincidence that Ellard’s emergence as the Rams’ top receiver has paralleled Everett’s rise as the team’s quarterback. In the five games the two have played together, they have combined 28 times for 367 yards.

“We hit it off real well,” Ellard said. “He knows exactly where I’m going to be when I come out of my routes, and he knows where I’m going to go.”

It usually takes a season, sometimes several seasons, for a quarterback and receiver to establish such rapport, but Ellard thinks he and Everett are at that stage after five weeks.

“It’s great that it has happened so soon,” Ellard said. “The maturity of Jim Everett, of course, has a lot to do with that.”

Everett thought Ellard deserved much of the credit.

“He’s a natural, and he can make a lot of quarterbacks look good,” he said. “He runs good routes and is excellent at reading coverages. Those are the types of things that make for a successful player.”

And for a happy day, win or lose.