No Panic, but Ram Victory Is Important : Offense: On a day when he completes 18 of 25 passes, Everett avoids blocking to live to win another day.

In his fifth season with the Rams and already third on the team’s all-time passing yardage list, Jim Everett plays the game on pure instinct at times.

However, he also has matured enough to realize that there are times when the will to survive supersedes that instinct to succeed.

Take the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 35-14 rout of Tampa Bay. With 57 seconds to play, Everett handed off to Cleveland Gary. The Ram tailback found the road around right end blocked, so he reversed direction and took a detour around the left side. Everett saw the play developing and took off in front of Gary as a lead blocker.

Now, Coach John Robinson might have considered pulling his No. 1 quarterback before this last series began, and he certainly would have yanked Everett if he thought he would be out there imitating a pulling guard.

Shortly before making contact with a Buccaneer linebacker, however, Everett had the good sense to flop to the Tampa Stadium turf.

“I was going to block and then I thought, ‘No, I’m just gonna get on down,’ ” Everett said, laughing. “I don’t want to put myself in a situation like that where something could happen when you have a lead like that.

“If it was a close game, I would’ve tried to hit somebody. But if you check the film on this one, you’ll see I didn’t hit anything but air.”

The Rams, of course, would much prefer to see Everett throwing the ball than hurling his body through space.

And, after last week’s defeat in Green Bay, everybody in blue and gold was glad to see his passes end their flights in the hands of Ram receivers, who also managed to hang onto the ball this time around.

Everett completed 14 of his first 19 passes for 191 yards and three touchdowns as the Rams took a 28-7 halftime lead. He finished 18 of 25 for 269 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions.

Everett has 11,965 yards, passing Bob Waterfield, who threw for 11,893 yards in eight seasons with the Rams (1945-52). Next up is Norm Van Brocklin, who passed for 16,114.

Roman Gabriel leads with 22,223 in 11 seasons with the Rams, and if Everett maintains his current pace, he could become the Rams’ leader in 1993.

After last week’s out-of-sync performance in Green Bay, however, the only statistics the Rams were concerned with showed up in their record: 1-1.

Everett said that, while no one was on the verge of panic, he did think “we had to get a win.”

“In our division, we just can’t afford to lose that many games,” he said. “But we still came out here playing with confidence.

“There were a lot of people involved with the passing game who took that (loss to Green Bay) very personally. We wanted to prove that (the lack of timing) was not a factor anymore. I thought we had a great week of work in practice this week.”

It was evident from the outset Sunday. The Rams scored touchdowns on three of their first four possessions and missed a field goal on the other. Everett completed eight of his first nine attempts, including touchdown passes to Buford McGee (six yards) and Henry Ellard (14 yards) as the Rams went ahead, 14-0, in the first quarter.

“Jim had a great start and great day, which is becoming normal for him,” said tight end Pete Holohan, who had three catches for 51 yards. “He put the ball right on the money most of the time.”

By halftime, Everett had hooked up with nine receivers. He also threw touchdown passes of 42 yards and 10 yards to Robert Delpino. Delpino scored touchdowns both times he touched the ball.

“I think we moved the ball the way we wanted to today,” Coach John Robinson said. “We ran the ball well enough for our passing game to be successful, and I felt much better about our rhythm from the very beginning.

“Jim had a very good game. He played very effectively.”

Considering the statistics--only seven incompletions, no interceptions and four touchdowns--that’s a bit of an understatement.

Everett, however, was quick to point out that the Ram passing game probably wasn’t as bad as it looked last week in Green Bay nor as good as it appeared in Tampa.

“The guys were doing a great job of catching the ball and holding onto it, our offensive line was picking up the stunts and the Bucs kept things pretty vanilla, staying with standard defenses, trying to force us to make the mistakes like we did last week,” Everett said. “But a lot of things went our way today. Not every one of my passes were spirals, but somehow we ended up on the right end of them.”

In the end, it was a case of making mostly correct decisions, such as throwing the ball--not his body--into the Tampa Bay secondary.