Everett Gets His Revenge on Glanville : Rams: Quarterback hasn't forgotten what coach has said about him during his holdout days in Houston. - Los Angeles Times
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Everett Gets His Revenge on Glanville : Rams: Quarterback hasn’t forgotten what coach has said about him during his holdout days in Houston.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Twice Sunday afternoon, Jim Everett had that look on his face, the look in which the eyes inflate like miniature blimps and the smile shifts into spread formation.

The first time came in the third quarter, when Everett spotted the Atlanta Falcons in a full-on safety blitz, which left Flipper Anderson twiddling his thumbs far downfield, awaiting the re-entry of Everett’s 37-yard touchdown lob.

The second time came in the locker room, when someone asked Everett about the personal satisfaction derived by beating Jerry Glanville at his own game, in a rout, by a final score of 44-24.

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“It’s good,” Everett said without a moment’s hesitation. “It’s nice to even the series with him.

“But we still have another one. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of Jerry Glanville.”

Everett hasn’t. Ever since he refused to sign with Glanville’s Houston Oilers in 1986, forcing his eventual trade to the Rams, he’s had to handle an earful.

Everett can’t take a hit, Jerry jabbed.

Everett has chicken legs . . . and a heart to go with it.

Everett sure looks like he could use some real coaching.

Hell hath no fury like a football coach scorned.

Glanville had the opportunity to rub it in in 1987, when the Oilers upset the Rams on opening day, 20-16, under the Astrodome. And you know Glanville. He has never been one to let an opportunity go to waste.

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Three years later, Glanville was back in black, Atlanta Falcon black, and Everett turned the reunion into a dark affair, completing 24 of 38 passes for 302 yards, three touchdowns and a Ram triumph.

Forty-four points, counterpoint?

“I just like to win, period,” Everett said. “It goes beyond anything between two people. It great to see your teammates with smiles on their faces. It’s good to see the light in their eyes. We’ve been through some damn hard times the past five weeks.”

The past five weeks, Everett’s Rams were 1-4. That put them behind everyone else in the NFC West, including Glanville’s Falcons.

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Everett admitted waiting for this one with special anticipation. The sensation first struck about the same time the Glanville-to-Atlanta story first hit the wires.

“I look forward to playing him,” Everett said. “There are some things that happened down there (in Houston) that were the cause of Jerry Glanville, but it’s his style to be the voice of the team. He has a very aggressive attitude, and it’s his way of trying to rally a team around him.”

More than that, Everett believes Glanville rallied an entire city around him--and against Everett--during the embittered holdout days of 1986.

“Here I was,” Everett said, “a 22-year old man who just wants to play the game of football, and here’s Houston, wanting to pay me second-round money when I was the third guy taken in the draft.

“I had to live with being trade bait. It’s tough on a young guy. . . . Jerry was saying things about me during the holdout and, basically, he had the ear of everyone in Houston. He’s calling me a greedy young kid. All I wanted was to be treated the way I was supposed to be.”

Everett has found it in Anaheim, where the Rams not only rolled out the red carpet, but had it dry-cleaned and lined with rose petals. The Rams gave him a $14-million contract, an impenetrable offensive line, the fleetest fleet of receivers this side of the Golden Gate.

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“Everything turned out for the best,” Everett notes.

Now in his fifth NFL season, Everett has the benefit of perspective and time’s passage. Today, he says, “I don’t know if that was really Jerry talking then. He might have been pressured. We were just two pawns on the board.”

If Glanville won’t publicly reveal any new respect for Everett, his actions Sunday spoke loudly enough. If Everett still rattled in the pocket under pressure, Glanville would have sent his linebackers and safeties blitzing from kickoff to sundown.

Instead, Atlanta’s defense came out backpedaling, choosing containment over derailment, which Everett claimed was one reason he needed a quarter--and a 10-0 deficit--before he got jump-started.

“Initially, we were prepared for the blitz all the time,” Everett said. “But they came out in a loose zone. They were playing a scheme designed not to give up the big play. It took me a little time to adjust.”

The adjustment took Everett from a five-for-14 start to 14 completions in his next 16 attempts. Along the way, the Rams scored on eight consecutive possessions, outpointing the Falcons in the process, 44-7.

And for Everett, no points were sweeter than the ones Anderson produced on one of the very few times Glanville called for the blitz.

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“We were prepared for that,” Everett said, grinning again. “I saw ‘em coming right away and I was yelling to (fullback) Buford (McGee)--’Buford, Buford, here he comes, pick him up!’

“Buford made the block and all I had to do was pick a spot and throw to it. Flipper just ran it down.”

Now the scoreboard reads: Everett 1, Glanville 1. The two still haven’t spoken since Everett left Houston. After Sunday’s game, Everett shook hands with several Falcons.

But not Glanville.

“Maybe if he has something pertinent to say someday, I’ll respond,” Everett said.

Glanville was too busy assessing his own damage to address old battle lines with old quarterbacks, so Everett got the last word, on the field and off.

“You’ve got to respect Jerry as a coach,” Everett said. “He knows how to motivate a team. But he doesn’t put on a helmet. He doesn’t put on the pads. We’re in two different realms.”

Kind of sounds as if Everett wouldn’t mind seeing Jerry lining up at free safety the next time their paths cross.

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Everett laughed at the suggestion.

“ I didn’t say that.”

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