Eric Who? Rams Take to the Air, Rip Colts, 31-17
The real star of Sunday’s game, Henry Ellard, stood on his tiptoes and tried to get a peek at him. A nod would have been fine. Ellard leaned over the backs of reporters who crowded the losing team’s running back at the 15-yard line.
Showing some of the moves he used against the Indianapolis Colts for 12 receptions, 230 yards and three touchdowns, Ellard found an opening, slipped between two cameramen and touched the runner’s fingertips.
It was some scene, watching Eric Dickerson leave the arena.
The game went to the Rams, 31-17, before 63,995 at Anaheim Stadium. But one moment was Dickerson’s. In the context of the game he was a footnote, rushing for 116 yards in what turned out to be a quarterback shoot-out.
In the context of the week and the final scene, Dickerson remained at center stage.
As the final gun sounded, several Rams dropped their scowls and surrounded Dickerson near the northern end zone, hugging him openly as their own fans jeered Dickerson from the stands.
“We just wanted to let Eric know that, no matter what, you’re our friend,” Ram cornerback Jerry Gray said. “He gave the Rams the best years he had. And he’s still a friend of ours.”
Cameras and reporters followed Dickerson off the field. As the boos grew louder, Dickerson hoisted his helmet in the air. As he lowered himself into the visitors’ tunnel, the crowd above littered him with play money.
“It should have been real money,” Dickerson said. “We would have stopped to pick it up.”
In the end, Dickerson would have only changed the final score. For lost in his return was a show of offensive power from the Rams, who amassed 449 total yards against a defense that never quite got the message.
The Colts guessed wrongly that the road to victory would begin with all feet running toward Ram quarterback Jim Everett. The Colts blitzed Everett relentlessly and didn’t seem to mind that he was tearing through their secondary and the Ram record book.
The Colts stubbornly insisted on playing wide receiver Ellard with single coverage, using tag-team cornerbacks Chris Goode, Eugene Daniel and John Baylor.
“They had four different guys on him,” Everett said. “But only one at a time. That was the key.”
Ellard had 112 receiving yards and two touchdowns at the half. Everett had thrown for 200 yards in two quarters.
Still, the score was 17-17, so the Colts decided not to change the game plan at halftime. Big mistake.
The Rams dominated the second half. Ellard’s 230 total receiving yards were the third-highest total in Ram history. Everett completed 28 of 35 passes for 368 yards and three touchdowns.
Everett, who completed his final eight passes to close out the first half, continued his streak into the third quarter, when he drove the Rams 77 yards for what turned out to be the winning touchdown, a six-yard pass to Ellard.
Everett set up the score by connecting on passes of 21 and 30 yards to Ellard. Would the Colts ever learn?
“They had Henry Ellard in single coverage,” Everett said. “I don’t think you can do that with him.”
You can’t. Ask the Colts.
“We tried to take as much away from them as possible,” Colt Coach Ron Meyer said. “We tried to put pressure on Everett. But they were just very good today.”
Everett ran his consecutive completion streak to 12 with the touchdown pass and stretched the streak to 14, breaking the club record of 13 by Pat Haden. The streak was broken when receiver Flipper Anderson dropped what should have been a 67-yard touchdown pass.
Everett said it was like playing catch, especially with Ellard, who was nothing short of unstoppable.
“You almost can’t wait till the next play,” Ellard said. “Especially when it’s a pass route. You can’t wait to get your hands on the ball.”
Everett’s only mistake almost turned out to be disastrous. The Rams had first-and-goal at the four-yard line early in the fourth quarter when an Everett swing pass intended for Damone Johnson was intercepted in the flat by Michael Ball, who might have gone 90 yards for the tying score had Johnson not wrapped him up from behind.
But the Rams escaped unscathed. Then they extended the lead on Greg Bell’s two-yard scoring run with 1:34 left. And the celebration began. They flashed Dickerson’s picture on the big screen and the crowd loved it. They flashed a banner shortly before Bell’s leap into the end zone: Dickerson, that name rings a Bell.
The fans whooped and hollered, far more than usual for an Anaheim Stadium crowd.
“They were into it pretty good,” Ram defensive end Doug Reed said.
“It’d be nice if they could keep it up.”
Of course, it’s not every day that Dickerson comes back to town.
On his first carry, Dickerson ran into his old friend Reed, who offered a quick hello before wrestling his buddy for a three-yard loss. Dickerson would have his moments, although his return became somewhat muddled as the arms race between quarterbacks Everett and Chandler escalated.
Chandler completed 20 of 33 passes for 266 yards in the game, but didn’t reach the end zone in the second half when it mattered.
Everett started the shoot-out late in the first quarter when he broke a 3-3 tie by driving the Rams 79 yards on four plays, finishing off the series with a 29-yard scoring pass to Ellard, who had beaten Goode over the middle. Ellard beating Goode would become a familiar theme.
The Colts blitzed Everett on all four plays, later wishing they hadn’t.
While the Rams dogged Dickerson’s every move, it was Chandler who cut up their secondary, hitting the speedy Clarence Verdin in stride for an 82-yard scoring pass to open the second quarter. That tied it, 10-10.
The Colts took the lead, 17-10, with 7:52 left in the half on a two-yard Dickerson run, capping a 10-play, 50-yard drive.
Everett responded with the drive of the half, a 90-play march that consumed 6:22 on the clock and led to a 17-yard scoring pass to Ellard with 1:30 left. Everett was masterful on the drive, completing eight consecutive passes for 78 yards, including a fourth-down, 11-yard toss to Ellard to the Colt 27.
Everett was 15 for 18 in the half for 209 yards and two touchdowns. Chandler threw for 170 yards.
Dickerson rushed for 69 yards in 14 carries in the half, dispelling any myths about the Ram defense shutting him down completely.
Ram Coach John Robinson, who is glad to have this game out of the way, afterward tried to patch things up with his former star runner.
“I think Eric Dickerson is the best runner I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I used to think that. I still do. I want to put to bed some of the second-rate things that can go on.”
Dickerson was appreciative.
“It’s a compliment,” he said. “I’ve had other compliments, but thank John for that.”
There were never many hard feelings among Dickerson and his Ram teammates.
“He’s good friends with a lot of guys on this football team,” veteran tackle Jackie Slater said. “Him leaving was something we’d rather not have had happen.”
But it happened. And that’s what made Sunday’s game so difficult.
“We didn’t know whether to slam him down or kiss him,” Reed said of Dickerson. “So we did a little of both.”
EVERETT’S STREAK A breakdown of Jim Everett’s 14 consecutive completions against Indianapolis.
SECOND QUARTER
1. Pete Holohan 6 yards
2. Greg Bell 3 yards
3. Holohan 6 yards
4. Buford McGee 5 yards
5. Henry Ellard 26 yards
6. Bell 4 yards
7. Ellard 11 yards
8. Ellard 17 yards (TD)
THIRD QUARTER
9. Ellard 21 yards
10. Ellard 30 yards
11. McGee 1 yard
12. Ellard 6 yards
13. Ellard 6 yards
14. Bell minus-3 yards
Ram Notes
Gaston Green’s right hamstring tightened in pregame warmups and he did not play. . . . Jim Everett’s team record of 14 consecutive passes was eight short of tying the league record of 22, held by San Francisco quarterback Joe Montana. . . . Sunday’s game fell 2,353 tickets short of a sellout. . . . Tailback Greg Bell finished with 68 yards in 22 carries. . . . Flipper Anderson had three catches for 79 yards.
* CATCH THIS PERFORMANCE
Everything added up for Henry Ellard, who had one of the best games of his career. Gene Wojciechowski’s story, Page 12.
