Forget the Past, Remember Pass : Rams: Everett shakes off effects of two poor seasons and regains confidence with help from Knox and Tollner.

Like a man free to roam in sunlight after two years of dark rooms and unwelcome interrogations, Jim Everett has immersed himself in a special kind of voluntary amnesia these days.

Ask the Ram quarterback about 1990 and 1991, seasons during which he was held hostage by failed teams and his own unsteady play, and Everett shakes his head.

“It does no good,” Everett says. “It does absolutely no good. What I have right now is a job at hand.

“Guys that were fighting right in the middle of World War II, I don’t think they were going around every day discussing what happened in World War I. They’d have gotten their butts blown off.

“Same situation. New war.”

And he’s a new quarterback--or at least a changed quarterback from the shaken, confidence-sapped player who limped out of 1991 a defeated man with the lowest passer rating in his career as a starter.

Was he finished as a quarterback who could dominate games? Twenty interceptions and only 11 touchdown passes in 1991 screamed yes.

So to reawaken his career, at 29, Everett decided he had to strip it down to the fundamentals--feet, arm, mind--and stop fretting about everybody else’s failures and faults, or trying to win every game by throwing deep all the time.

Coach Chuck Knox came in preaching a philosophy of patience and prudence, and presented Everett with seasoned quarterback coach Ted Tollner to reinforce those basic thoughts every day.

Then, after four inconsistent games, results showed.

Ignited by his electrifying 20-for-24, 232-yard performance against the San Francisco 49ers on Oct. 4 and his quick decisions in the pocket, Everett has gone on a tear reminiscent of his late-’80s reign as the NFL’s hottest quarterback.

“For a while there, everybody was on his back, coaches, the press and what-have-you,” said tight end Jim Price, perhaps Everett’s closest friend on the team. “He just stayed focused and said, ‘This isn’t the way they’re going to remember Jim Everett--as the 1990 or 1991 quarterback.’

“He’s just in a zone where you don’t worry about anything: You’re not worried about the protection or getting hit, you’re just dropping back and doing what comes natural. That’s when he’s at his best.”

In the Rams’ last six games, he has avoided forcing deep passes and exploited defenses with a spree of short passes and the running of Cleveland Gary, who has stepped up to give the Rams their first ground threat since 1989. Everett has completed 72% of his passes, racked up 1,391 yards passing, thrown for 11 touchdowns--and only three interceptions--and watched his rating soar from the low-60s to 85.4, fifth-best in the NFC.

And the Rams have scored an average of 23.5 points in those six games. Before the 49er game--a close defeat--the Rams had gone 11 consecutive games without scoring 20 points or more.

“We’re excited about our chances each week to win, even against Dallas (last week),” Tollner said. “I mean, we were a decided underdog, but we felt, ‘Hey, at the level he’s playing, if he keeps playing that way, we’ve got a chance, because we’ll move the chains and put some points on the board.’

“It gives everybody hope. It gives our defense hope, it gives our linemen hope because he’s getting the ball up quick and they don’t have to protect forever. It allows our run game to go. The whole thing fits.”

But Everett says he won’t let himself wrestle with the nuances of his current run.

“I really am not getting caught up in it,” Everett said. “If I really got caught up in being a hot quarterback, you’d really get caught up in being a cold quarterback. I really never got caught up in that.

“There’s too many swings. I’m just trying to do the job that’s asked of me and continue to do it.”

That doesn’t stop Knox and Tollner from praising him at every turn, though.

Knox said this week that he has never coached a quarterback who is playing as well as Everett is now.

“Oh, it’s just great,” Knox said. “I mean, he’s making the right reads, the ball is coming out of there very quick, he’s accurate, he’s just doing all the things that great quarterbacks can do.

“I’ve never had a guy that has the physical characteristics, that tall, can get the ball off that quick, and be as precise with the football, know where to go with it and be as accurate as he’s been these last seven, eight games.”

The crucial point, according to Tollner, has been Everett’s willingness to accept the situation at hand, then take advantage of it without getting embroiled in everything around him. He has stressed getting rid of the ball quickly--and has emphasized that Everett doesn’t need to throw deep to prove his value.

“You can’t do what he did in ’88 and ’89 and not have tremendous ability,” Tollner said. “It was a matter, I think, of doing too much when it wasn’t there--and all it does is give you negative return.

“He’s playing without ever pressing right now. He’s playing with a real smooth rhythm. He’s not forcing balls and I think as things happen positive for you, it allows you to do that.”

Tollner points to a play in last week’s upset of the Cowboys. Everett saw that Gary was covered on the right flat by cornerback Issiac Holt, calmly swung his eyes to the middle to freeze Holt, then flicked the ball to Gary in stride for a touchdown.

Everett, picking up a note of surprise in his questioner’s voice when asked about the subtleties involved in that play, said nobody notices subtle quarterbacking when it is done in losing efforts.

“It’s probably just one of those things that (people) just haven’t picked up on very much,” Everett said. “It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon when we’re going good and we’re throwing a lot.

“I’d like to think those things are always going to be there. I don’t think my confidence has gone up and down a whole lot. There have been times in the past, in World War I, that were different. But I’ll be the same quarterback.”