There’s No Maybe About It, Rams Give Atlanta a Lift

Maybe Atlanta cornerback Elbert Shelley should have been flagged for pass interference when he threw that chokehold around Flipper Anderson at the Falcon five-yard line.

Maybe Jim Everett should have ended his coffee break inside the pocket and sprinted left, with half of Georgia free and open before him, on third-and-10 at the Falcon 27.

Maybe Atlanta safety Roger Harper was guilty of face-guarding Ernie Jones in the end zone on what proved to be the Rams’ final offensive play of the night.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe the Rams had no business scrambling all over the floor of the Georgia Dome during the last three minutes, trailing an 0-5 football team that was down to its third-string quarterback, heaving and hoping and waiting for referee assistance in order to pull out a game they once led, 17-3.

Thursday night, the Rams were the perfect salve for a city still hung over from the Braves’ hard crash in the National League playoffs. It was quite an assignment: Save Jerry Glanville’s career, resuscitate Billy Joe Tolliver’s quarterbacking career, make Erric Pegram a nationally televised star, turn Deion Sanders from goat to hero in the scant time it takes to switch from spikes to cleats and, if you could, give tens of thousands of Atlantans a reason to go on living.

But you know the Rams.

They are here to please.

So they threw away a 14-point second-quarter lead, along with probably any hope they harbored of chasing down a wild-card berth this fall, and gave Atlanta a consolation prize bigger and fatter than any pitch Greg Maddux served up the previous evening in Philadelphia.

The Rams lost to the last winless team in the National Football Conference, 30-24, in the kind of breathless collapse that stabs again at The Question That Won’t Go Away, despite the passage of time, bye weeks and by-rote sound bites from an ever-weary Chuck Knox:

What’s the deal with Jim Everett?

Everett threw for two touchdowns and nearly 300 yards Thursday, but he also had two second-half passes intercepted to wave smelling salts over the fallen Falcons--and then, given three minutes and more blocking than he knew what to do with, failed to extricate the Rams from the mess he had gotten them into.

The first interception, misfired while Everett was on the run, gave the Falcons the ball at the Ram 23, setting up a quick dash to the tying touchdown.

The second interception, an undermuscled pass on a down-and-out route by Henry Ellard, returned the ball to the Falcons on their own 41, setting up the eventual go-ahead touchdown four plays later.

A fumbled kickoff would give Atlanta three more points and a 30-24 lead. But Everett still had one more chance, even if it required him to cover 92 yards in three minutes. That was the bad news. The good news was that he would be throwing into the toothless face of the worst pass defense in the league.

It was an opportunity, nothing more, nothing less.

Here is what Everett made of it:

--A 10-yard scramble and a pair of completions gave Everett a first down at the Ram 47, from where he lofted a deep pass for Anderson, who had beaten his man, Shelley, down the middle of the field.

“It was a touchdown,” Anderson said. “Without a doubt. I never even saw (Shelley). All I was thinking about was catching the ball and running up the tunnel again.”

But Everett’s pass fluttered as it approached Anderson, allowing Shelley the split-second he needed to catch up and do whatever he could to break up the play--even mug Flipper if he could get away with it, and he did.

No pass interference penalty was called and Flipper was livid, contending that “even Deion knew it was interference. He told me after the game he was looking for flags. It was a hometown call.”

--Three more short completions and the Rams had the ball at the Falcon 27. Then, two incompletions.

Then, on third down, Everett set up behind the Great Wall of Georgia, looking right, looking left, looking over the middle, looking at the scoreboard, looking for loose change on the field. He looked for everything except a place to run--and the entire left side of the field was open, there for his taking, a sure first down if he had dared to step out of the pocket.

Everett chose to stay put and force a pass into the end zone for Flipper again. Broken up, incomplete, setting up a fourth-down pass that was also forced into the end zone, for Jones. Broken up, incomplete again.

Should Everett had run when he had the chance?

He did when the reporters sidled up to his locker stall, grabbing his shoes and socks and escaping through the shower area.

But Ram quarterbacks coach Ted Tollner stuck around long enough to answer the question.

“Yeah,” Tollner said. “In hindsight, yes, he should have run. Now, you know, he knows he’s not a scrambler and he was looking for something else there, but he would have been better off running. If he came up short (of the first down), we’d be working with third and short.”

And Tollner was in no mood to discuss swallowed whistles and if-only pass interference infractions.

“I thought it was interference, but with a good ball, that’s not even a consideration,” Tollner said. “With a good ball, (Shelley) wouldn’t be able to catch up.

“It’s the same old thing--it’s easy to blame something else. But it hung up there. It was underthrown.”

That said, Tollner could understand why Everett didn’t want to talk about it.

“He’s going through hell,” Tollner said. “He really is.”

And the Rams are riding shotgun, getting their own view of Hades as they pass through.

What does it look like?

Atlanta, on a Thursday night.