Rams Stick With It All the Way, Did You?

TAMPA, Fla. —  Cleveland Gary has one of those brains that runs against the grain--nature made him a cutback thinker--so when he was asked about this comeback, this 24-point comeback, this greatest comeback in the history of the Cleveland-Los Angeles-Anaheim Rams, Gary just grinned and insisted he’d see it all before.

“Plenty of times,” Gary assured a couple of reporters, nodding for emphasis.

“At Miami. We had plenty of them at Miami.”

Timeout, interjected one of the writers, a Florida writer who has been watching the University of Miami play football for years.

“I can’t remember,” the writer said, “Miami ever being behind by 24 points.”

Apparently, Gary could.

But could he provide specifics? Examples? Evidence?

Gary just kept smiling, basking in the glow of his own little world, where a 27-3 halftime deficit is just a minor inconvenience and the 5-8 Rams are the reincarnation of the ’58 Colts, just a little unluckier.

“I knew we could come back,” Gary said. “There was never a doubt.

“When we’re healthy, and with the type of offense we have, anything’s possible.

“We showed that today.”

Gary’s was not the majority view, as anyone with ESPN and a remote control will have to admit.

Stay with this one all the way, did you?

After Tampa Bay scored three touchdowns in the second quarter--two of them in a span of 13 seconds?

After Gary fumbled on his first carry of the game . . . and Anthony Newman and Pat Terrell tackled each other on an 81-yard Tampa Bay scoring play, Vinny Testaverde to Tyji Armstrong . . . and David Lang fumbled the ensuing kickoff . . . and Tampa Bay’s Roger Jones ran that fumble back for another score . . . and Tony Zendejas had a 37-yard field goal attempt blocked as the halftime gun sounded?

After the worst first half of this Ram season--these were the Buccaneers, remember, not the Buffalo Bills--had ESPN broadcasters Mike Patrick and Joe Theismann been contemplating card tricks to kill the time in the second half?

“Wait a minute,” Newman said to himself during the break. “We’re better than this. We can’t play this bad, not on national TV. This is B.S.”

That it was, but what could the Rams do about it? Before Sunday, no Ram team had ever rallied from 24 points back. Only one ever rallied from 22 points back, but that one had Bob Waterfield and Tank Younger and Elroy Hirsch and Tom Fears.

That one trailed the Green Bay Packers, 28-6, in the fourth quarter and came back to win, 30-28.

In 1952.

Forty years later, these Rams had Jim Everett and David Lang and Jeff Chadwick and Jim Price.

Who could have ever imagined that would be enough?

When the Rams bowed their heads and retreated into the Tampa Stadium tunnel after the first half, they tried to block out the obscenities and the invectives that serenaded them into the visitors’ locker room.

“Some stadiums are worse than others,” cornerback Darryl Henley said, “but this one was pretty bad. They were saying specific things, individual things, things I can’t repeat and you can’t print.

“Basically, they were saying, ‘You guys are horrible, just horrible.’ You hear it and you think to yourself, ‘Man, you don’t know football.’ We’ve been through so much crap this year, we, more than anyone, know that crazy things can happen.”

Sitting in front of his locker stall, Henley gazed at his shoe tops and started thinking.

“You know, we weren’t playing the 49ers,” he said. “We’re playing a team very similar to us. They were 4-8, they’d been in a lot of close games that they lost and felt the should’ve won.

“This was a team we felt we could beat.”

Just to make sure, though, Henley and his teammates worked the math out first.

“Think about it: We basically spotted them 27 points,” Henley said. “So you look at 27 points and say, ‘If the defense plays, we need to score two touchdowns a quarter.’ That’s exactly what we said. ‘We’ve got to get two touchdowns in the third quarter and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter.’ ”

The Rams got one in the first two minutes of the third quarter--a 40-yard scoring fade from Everett to Flipper Anderson.

They got another less than three minutes later--Everett pump fake-and-27-yard bullet to Chadwick in the left corner of the end zone.

And three minutes after that, astoundingly, they got one more--Lang, on a pitch back and a one-yard sweep around left end.

“The offense got on one of those rolls,” Newman said. “We were looking at each other on the sidelines--’See? What’d I tell you?’ ”

Suddenly, however, the rolling stopped.

Lang caught a pass over the middle, good for 12 yards, but spotted the end zone out of the corner of his eye and was hit hard as he turned for more. Fumble.

Next series, Everett hit Henry Ellard, right in the hands, on third-and-eight, but Henry’s hands fail him. Rams are forced to punt.

Less than six minutes remain when the Rams, able to put together nine straight plays with no drops and no fumbles, drive to the Tampa Bay eight-yard line. From there, it’s a quick dropback by Everett and a quicker strike to tight end Pat Carter.

Touchdown, Rams.

Unfathomable comeback, Rams.

When told it was the greatest comeback ever by the Rams, Newman beamed and said, “Exciting enough for you?”

When told it was the greatest comeback ever by the Rams, Everett lowered his voice and said, “I’m very honored to be associated with that.”

And Gary, when told it was the greatest comeback ever by the Rams, said he’d seen better, or just as good, just a few years ago and a few miles down the road.

Gary did allow that this game “was somewhat strange, the way we got behind so fast. But, we recuperated.”

Given another two or three days, Ram fans may do the same.