At Long Last, a Monday Everett Can Smile About : Rams: Quarterback completed 20 of 24 passes in encouraging showing despite loss to 49ers.
A day later, and Jim Everett still was smiling. A day later, for the first time in maybe two years, he had every right.
Everett, who has seen his star fall steadily and steeply the past two years, looked relaxed and confident Monday, recounting exactly how he looked so relaxed and confident Sunday in the Rams’ invigorating 27-24 loss to the San Francisco 49ers.
How sharp was he Sunday? Everett, who entered the game the lowest-rated quarterback in the NFC, dropped back to pass 29 times during the game, and did everything right on 28 of those chances.
He completed has first 12 passes, completed 20 of 24 overall (a career-high 83.3% success rate), threw two touchdowns, threw the ball away when nobody was open and found his receivers when they were. The only time his coaches graded him as unsatisfactory came on an incomplete pass that was nullified by a holding penalty.
And when he was asked if his performance Sunday reminded him of some old, almost-forgotten times --like say, maybe as long ago as 1989--Everett grinned like a Cheshire cat.
“Like old times? Felt like good times,” Everett said Monday, obviously relishing a chance to talk about a good game rather than explain a series of bad ones. “You know, it felt good to have a smile out there and having things rolling.
“We didn’t win that ballgame, and that’s what it all comes down to doing, but it felt good to be effective and an effective leader.”
This is the way it used to be most of the time with the Rams, back in the pre-collapse days of 1988 and ’89 when Everett was unstoppable and the offense was one long sprint for daylight.
The current Rams had gone the previous 10 games without scoring 20 or more points and the previous four this season looking as if Everett would never do it again.
Sunday, whether it was zipping short passes to open tight ends eight times for 99 yards and a touchdown or flicking sharp sideline out-patterns to wideouts, Everett was in total, unflinching command. His new position coach, Ted Tollner, said that of all the things he saw in Everett on Sunday, he probably was most impressed by his steadiness under fire in a fluid pocket.
“The thing I liked the best was the way he focused up the field,” Tollner said. “When he was moving in the pocket, there was total 100% focus up the field on what was going on from a coverage and receiver standpoint, and yet he moved with an ease in the pocket. It was a feel of avoiding the pressure, but not a focus on it. The focus was totally up the field.
“That comes, I think, as you’re getting confidence in the game. You just kind of feel it, you don’t look at it. You know where your receivers are and you know where the coverage is and you’re making solid decisions because that’s where your eyes are.”
Over the first four games, Everett had completed only 50.9% of his passes and had thrown seven interceptions, giving him a quarterback rating in the Bubby Brister range--52.2.
In those games, under a steady pass rush, Everett often appeared to fall into the same, unsteady habits of the past two years, hurrying passes and anticipating pressure that sometimes did not exist.
“You take the number of passes he throws in a game, and most of the time, the great percentage he was doing exactly what was expected of him in a fundamentally sound way,” Tollner said of the first four games.
“But the times he didn’t was hurting us. And it would take us out of a drive . . . So then you reflect on the game, you think it was a poor game.
“(The performance Sunday) has kind of given us all some confidence, but . . . we really believed it was going to happen. We weren’t sure when.
“And each week was going by and we were saying, ‘Golly, we’re doing what was right and you’re close to doing what we believe is right, and it’s not happening, the game is over.’
“I don’t think we were as far off in our confidence as it looked like, because we just believed it was going to happen.”
Sunday, of course, it happened, and now comes the scurry to figure out exactly why it did, when things clicked and how Everett and the offense can duplicate the feat--specifically this Sunday night, against the New Orleans Saints.
“I think sometimes we have a tendency to find some mystical thing that happened that made a difference,” Tollner said. “(But) if a guy has ability and he works hard and there’s people around him that can do something, that eventually’s going to happen if you’re solid.”
The Rams do not deny that a lot of Everett’s game keys on his confidence, and that many of his darkest times have come when his attitude has been bleak. Sunday, Everett got off to a blazing start and kept on going.
“I think it was the first time all year that . . . his first ball was caught,” Tollner said. “Then he got into a string where he goes to 12, whatever it was. You have something positive happen early and you can get on a roll.
“I felt a different air of confidence as the game went on.”
RAM NUMBERS
HIGHLIGHT
JIM EVERETT
Is Jim Everett back? One game doth not a quarterback make, but after two miserable seasons, Everett showed definite signs of revival Sunday. Against the arch-rival 49ers in San Francisco, yet. Everett, who completed but 50.9% of his passes in the Rams’ first four games, enjoyed his best day percentage-wise of his seven-year pro career. He completed his first 12 passes en route to a 20-for-24 afternoon (83.3%). Two of his completions went for touchdowns, with his nine-yard strike to Flipper Anderson in the fourth quarter being vintage Everett--a bullet that a diving Anderson caught in the rear of the end zone. Everett earlier was charged with his eighth interception of the season, but he was not at fault. Tight end Jim Price allowed the pass to bounce out of his hands into Keith DeLong’s arms.
SEASON TO DATE Five-Game Totals (Record: 2-3) First Downs RAMS: 73 OPP: 102 Rushing Yards RAMS: 512 OPP: 806 Passing Yards RAMS: 857 OPP: 907 Punts/Average RAMS: 24/43.3 OPP: 20/43.9 Rushing RAMS: ATT: 119 AVG: 4.3 TDs: 2 OPP: ATT: 150 AVG: 5.4 TDs: 7 Passing RAMS: ATT: 141 CP: 79 TDs: 5 OPP: ATT: 167 CP: 97 TDs: 4 Penalties/Yards RAMS: 27/196 OPP: 43/354 Fumbles/Lost RAMS: 10/5 OPP: 9/4 Interceptions/Yds RAMS: 9/148 OPP: 8/169 Possession Time RAMS: 27:29 OPP: 32:31 Scoring by Quarters
1 2 3 4 OT TOTAL RAMS 0 19 21 33 0 73 OPP 41 23 10 29 0 103
