The Little General in Command : Flutie Plans to Win Meadowlands Against Express

Doug Flutie remembers his first days of work with the New Jersey Generals. He felt like the new kid in grammar school, only worse. He was an out-of-towner who carried with him a reputation. He wasn’t like all the others.

“It was my biggest fear,” Flutie said, “how I would be received. I was a little nervous. I walked into the locker room and the players didn’t want to get up and introduce themselves. I sort of had to break the ice with a couple of the guys.”

Imagine, for a moment, the size of the knot in Doug Flutie’s stomach. Flutie, the hot-shot Heisman Trophy winner from Boston College, signed a five-year, $7-million contract with New Jersey on Feb. 4.

It didn’t take someone long to break his contract down to $25,926 an hour. It didn’t take someone long to proclaim him the savior of the United States Football League.

It didn’t take his team long to ship Brian Sipe, the quarterback who led the Generals to a 14-4 record the season before, out of town. It didn’t take long for New Jersey Coach Walt Michaels to say he actually preferred 6-foot 4-inch Steve Calabria, a drop-back passer from Colgate.

Then Flutie lost his first game against the Birmingham Stallions. At the end of the third quarter, he was 0 for 9 with two interceptions.

Gulp, and please pass the bicarbonate of soda.

But before detractors had a chance to throw paper cups, Flutie made another comeback.

He rallied the Generals to three fourth-quarter touchdowns against Birmingham and made the game close. More important, Doug Flutie felt like Doug Flutie again.

“I think I earned the respect of my teammates and answered a lot of questions about myself on this level,” Flutie said by telephone Tuesday from New Jersey. “By scoring those three touchdowns in the fourth quarter, it made the game respectable, it answered a lot of questions and maybe erased some doubts my teammates had.”

Flutie erased a few more doubts last Friday night. Against the Orlando Renegades, he passed for four touchdowns and ran for 57 yards in the Generals’ 28-10 win.

Flutie says he’s more relaxed.

“But people still have to realize I’m a rookie,” he said “I’ve only been here a month now. I’m still getting my feet wet. Last week was an exception, me throwing four touchdowns. That’s not going to happen every week.”

Flutie will get a chance to soak his feet this week when the Generals play host to the Express on Sunday at Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

It’s the Generals’ home opener, and their fans only want a few miracles.

The team has sold nearly 42,000 season tickets. And those people didn’t pay that kind of money to see Michaels coach.

“I have a feeling I’m going to be well received,” Flutie said. “The key is to have a great first game, to get the fans on my side. I’m coming into a new area, and now they’re my home crowd. It’ll be funny, being in New Jersey and having fans on my side.”

But Flutie knows they will stay on his side only as long as the team wins.

A few more outings such as his opening-game performance against Birmingham and the 5-9 3/4 Flutie will be looking for a small rock to crawl under.

But Flutie said he wasn’t ready for that game. He had only 16 days of practice and barely knew the Generals’ playbook.

“I really wasn’t comfortable as to where everybody was or where my secondary receivers were,” Flutie said.

He also didn’t feel very comfortable in Michaels’ system. It’s no secret that the New Jersey coach wasn’t particularly thrilled with Flutie’s signing. No offense intended, but Michaels liked Sipe just fine. And, if he was going to draft a college quarterback, he said it probably would have been Calabria.

But New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump wanted Flutie. He wanted hype, not Sipe. And he didn’t pay Flutie $7 million to pick up towels in the locker room.

So Michaels, for the good of his career in coaching, made Flutie his starter. The Generals traded Sipe to Jacksonville, and everything seemed mellow in the Meadowlands.

Initially, Michaels, a traditionalist who likes drop-back passers as opposed to scramblers, tried to make Flutie a pocket passer, causing a clash of styles.

Flutie seemed uncomfortable in this new role early in the Birmingham game two weeks ago. When the Generals fell behind, 31-7, Michaels had no choice but to let Flutie loose. And Flutie did what he does best--scramble.

It appears now that Michaels and Flutie have reached a compromise.

“Naturally, it adds a little excitement when your quarterback can run,” Michaels said. “It’s no secret, you can see it on the film. We’ll roll out with him more. We don’t mind him rolling out of the pocket. But we don’t want to expose him (to the defense). Even if he was 6-5 and 250 pounds, we wouldn’t want to expose him. There are too many big guys out there.”

Said Flutie: “Things have gone smoothly lately. The first couple of games they were hoping to get the running game going in the hope that they could protect me. But once we got down against Birmingham, they had to let me loose and all of a sudden I started playing better. They let me go a little bit and that showed that they had trust in me, they had faith in me. They let me go after it. The fact that they have confidence in me helped me a great deal.”

Express Notes

After two weeks, (quarterback?) Steve Young of the Express leads the USFL’s Western Conference in rushing. He’s gained 137 yards on 18 carries, an average of 7.6 yards per carry. “And I’ve been talking about how I want him to stay in the pocket,” Express Coach John Hadl said Tuesday. . . . Hadl said two of his top offensive lineman, tackle Mark Adickes and center Mike Ruether, will play in Sunday’s game against the Generals. Ruether, recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery, will start at center. Hadl is being careful with Adickes, who is recovering from a major knee injury suffered early last season. . . . Express running back David Hersey injured a knee in practice last week in practice and underwent arthroscopic surgery. He’ll be out about six weeks.