Curt Warner Back in Running After What He Calls ‘the One Awful Year of My Life’

‘If the Good Lord’s up there, he’s got to reward a running back who attacks rehabilitation the way he does defenses.’

--CHICK HARRIS, Seattle assistant coach

The village of Pineville, W.Va., is ringed by mountains. As the inhabitants say, you have to climb a mountain to get in or out of town.

Within the city limits, the population is a scant 1,000, and the high school enrollment is only 400.

In the late 1970s, all this worried Libby McKinney, a Pineville High School English teacher.

She thought the world might never hear of one of her brightest students, Curt Warner, the youngest child in the only black family in the school district.

“Knowing him, knowing what he’s made of, I was sure that Curt could play major college football,” McKinney said the other day.

But outside of Pineville, who knew it? And who ever came to Pineville?

So in 1977, McKinney became a volunteer recruiter for a half-dozen leading universities, including Penn State, Pitt, USC and Nebraska, recommending Warner to their coaches and sending along clippings from her town’s weekly newspaper.

Then, near the end of his junior year, she made her move. She took her young protege up north to meet Joe Paterno, Penn State’s football coach.

McKinney and her husband, Darrell, drove Warner to Charleston, flew on with him to Penn State, paying all of his expenses.

Paterno said later: “We never had a (Penn State) recruiter call on Curt Warner until Mrs. McKinney brought him to our attention.”

She had put her money on a winner. Warner became an All-American running back at Penn State, where in four years he set 41 school records. And in 1983, he joined the Seattle Seahawks as their first draft choice. In fact, he was the third player drafted that spring. Only John Elway and Eric Dickerson were picked ahead of him.

Warner has vivid memories of his first years in Seattle. “A dream come true, then a nightmare, and then a miracle,” he said.

In 1983, the dream year, Warner carried the ball for 1,449 yards as a rookie, leading the National Football League’s American Conference.

In 1984, the nightmare year, Warner’s right knee gave out in the second quarter of Seattle’s first game, putting him on crutches for a while and out of football for the year. “The one awful year of my life,” he said.

So now it’s 1985, presumably the miracle year. It’s off to a promising start. Warner, surprising everyone but his friends, seems sound again--unlike all three of the other NFL stars who went down with knee injuries last year, Kellen Winslow, Billy Sims and William Andrews.

At San Diego, they’re hoping, but not really believing, that Winslow can return by midseason. At Detroit, they doubt if Sims will be back this year. And at Atlanta, they wonder if Andrews will ever be back.

If Warner does beat the knee injury--and in Seattle’s last three exhibition games he was running with his old speed, power and finesse--there are perhaps two reasons.

His ligament injuries, though serious, could have been worse. Perhaps equally important, he has been patient, tireless and dedicated in rehabilitation, bearing up gamely under the agonies of a year of treatment.

There was a day, for example, when Chick Harris, a Seattle assistant coach, came upon Warner trying to run the treadmill--a test that can be grueling for a man with two good knees. As pain twisted his face, Warner, following a trainer’s directions, kept going, limping all the while.

Harris, awed, said: “Sweat was popping off Curt’s forehead like popcorn. If the Good Lord’s up there, he’s got to reward a running back who attacks rehabilitation the way he attacks defenses.”

Word of Warner’s tenacity didn’t surprise his former English teacher in West Virginia.

“I cried the day I heard about Curt’s injury--but not for long,” McKinney said. “I knew that if it’s humanly possible for anyone to come back from a thing like that, he’d be back.”

The sun is out in Seattle--it’s August and spring is here--and the players are out on the practice field. This is the most picturesque practice site in the NFL. The clubhouse and the field are both on the shores of Lake Washington. And at the moment, Warner is carrying the ball.

He is about to hit the line in a drill that Coach Chuck Knox identifies as nine-on-seven. That’s nine offensive players, with the wide receivers excluded, against a 3-4 or 4-3 defense, minus the secondary.

As Warner runs forward, his eyes are on the backsides of his grunting blockers. When the hole doesn’t open for him, Warner veers off, sliding laterally behind the line. Then, swiftly, he slides along some more.

There’s going to be a hole somewhere, depending on the direction of the defensive charge. And in a wink, Warner sees it. He cuts--planting his foot the way he did a year ago when the knee exploded--and bolts forward.

Sometimes he gets into the hole but not quite through it. Sometimes the converging linebackers nail him. But this time he makes it.

Touchdown.

In the language of Vince Lombardi, that is running to daylight, and Knox said: “Curt is the best run-to-daylight runner in America today.”

Over the years, Knox has always had a powerful running game. His runners since 1963 have included some of the NFL’s finest--from Emerson Boozer and Matt Snell to Mel Farr, Steve Owens, Lawrence McCutcheon, Joe Cribbs and Warner. Even Dan Doornink, last year. The big reason, Knox believes, is his devotion to nine-on-seven drills.

“You can’t coach running backs. Those guys are all instinct,” he said. “But you can prepare them to use their instinct. The best way is to run the nine-on-seven over and over. The holes open up in different places, just as they do in a game.”

Warner excels in run-to-daylight football because of his lateral speed. He can dart sideways almost as fast as he runs forward. And when he changes direction, there’s almost no loss of momentum .

“We call him Land Crab,” Doornink said.

Warner’s land-crab style, though, is hard on the knees. On an early fall afternoon just a year ago, when the Cleveland Browns were here for opening day at the Kingdome, the strain was too much.

Warner had gained 40 yards in 10 carries in the first quarter. As the second quarter began, he was again running to daylight. He never got there. As he planted to cut, the ligament tore. Nobody touched him. It just tore.

The doctors and trainers know now that the shoes he was wearing on Seattle’s synthetic grass floor were responsible. They were cleated soccer shoes, which are serviceable on some floors, but not at the Kingdome, and especially not for Warner.

They were too effective there. The cleats were unyielding under pressure. Instead, Warner’s knee gave way.

This year Warner is wearing a pair of heavy tennis shoes with no apparent loss of efficiency.

“His cuts are as sharp as ever, or close to it,” said Harris, the backfield coach. “But today when he puts too much pressure on his planting foot, the shoe gives a little. I notice that he hits and twists, which takes the pressure off the knee.”

In addition, Warner is wearing a new knee brace, a sleek, light-weight, sturdy number.

“It doesn’t restrict him,” said Knox. “I don’t see any change at all in Curt’s speed. He hasn’t lost a half-step.”

Said Harris: “He’s not only as fast as ever. Between the new equipment and the way he has rehabbed his legs, he’s stronger and tougher now than ever.”

He certainly seems so. Brush up against Warner today is like brushing into a redwood tree or a steel drum. The arms and legs seem steel-lined. At 205 pounds, Warner, who stands just under 6 feet, is almost burly.

The general impression is one of good health as well as sturdiness. The eyes are clear, the hair black and closely cropped, the drooping mustache insignificant, as if it had been painted on. The smile is whole-hearted, disarming, trusting.

A bachelor, Warner lives alone in a condominium he bought nearby, and he drives the short distance to work alone, in a red Jaguar. He said he doesn’t date much or go out much. And to the Seattle media he seems cool and withdrawn.

“He talks to you, but he’s always talking through a wall,” a Washington reporter said.

Still, to those who know him well, Warner has always seemed warm and engaging. He is a rare kind of football player--one who inspires fierce loyalties in his friends.

In the hospital last September, at the lowest point of his life, Warner woke up on the Monday after his final game and saw his old college roommate smiling at him from a nearby chair.

It was Todd Blackledge, the former Penn State quarterback who had joined the Kansas City Chiefs as their first draft choice in 1983, the year Warner went to the Seahawks. When he heard about Warner’s accident, Blackledge flew to Seattle.

“At a time like that, I thought he might want to see a friendly face,” Blackledge said.

One of Warner’s closest friends is still Libby McKinney. Asked for her telephone number, he rattled it off as if he calls her every week, which he probably does, unless she calls him.

He knows he can tell her about his triumphs without sounding conceited.

“Curt was always more than a student to me,” McKinney said. “He’s almost like a son. When he was still in high school, there was pure joy in his voice the night he called to say he’d made the Parade All-American team. He was happier about that than the day he graduated cum laude--in four years--at Penn State.”

In Seattle as at Penn State, Warner’s teammates seem to accept him as one of the gang, ragging him merrily.

In the clubhouse one afternoon last winter, during the week of a big game for the playoff-bound Seahawks, Warner slipped in from the training room down the hall after a long, painful day in rehabilitation, and, moaning, slumped at the bench in front of his locker.

When he couldn’t suppress the low moan, the noisy locker room grew still.

Then his closest friend on the Seahawks, safety Paul Moyer, called out: “Is Lassie hurting? Ooh, she hurts bad. Whine, whine, whine.”

Suddenly, the locker room was full of the sound of puppies crying.

Grinning, Warner stood up, fired an affectionate obscenity at Moyer--and looked a lot better.

But all that week, they called him Lassie.

Meanwhile, back in West Virginia, they are still talking about the winter day that put Pineville on the map.

It had been a stormy winter in those mountains, as usual, but you can tell a lot about a football player by watching him play basketball, and Libby McKinney had promised that Curt Warner would be there.

So as a snowstorm raged through the Alleghenies, Warner became a magnet for some of the nation’s top football coaches, all of them seeing him, and Pineville, for the first time.

On a recruiting trip from Nebraska, Coach Tom Osborne drove in through a foot of snow.

From Pitt, Coach Jackie Sherrill piloted a school plane as ice formed on the wings and threatened to drop him in the Guyandot River.

And from Penn State, Paterno was flying as a passenger when his snowblind pilot overshot the Pineville airport and nearly left him in a snowdrift.

The game was also hectic, matching PHS against arch-rival Mullens. But the biggest night in Pineville history ended predictably when, as Paterno and Sherrill stood up and openly cheered, Warner coolly sank the winning basket in the last two seconds.

“Curt could have played major college basketball anywhere,” said his high school coach, Ron Ellison.

It was Paterno’s good fortune that he didn’t.

Osborne, graciously conceding defeat, told McKinney, “I’d be happy if a son of mine played for Paterno.”

Warner, though preferring basketball, gave the basketball team little time in his last years at PHS, saving himself for football. Those under 6-6 should concentrate on football, as he realized one day when still a junior. Against Oceana High School, he scored five touchdowns in the first half on five kinds of plays--a run, a pass, an interception, a punt return and a kickoff return.

“I don’t think we touched him any of the five,” said Silas Mullins, Oceana’s coach.

Warner had begun his athletic career at age 5 in the village of Wyoming, where he was born. Wyoming is seven miles down the road from Pineville. He said he has never met his father. Like Ram running back Dickerson, Warner was raised by his grandparents.

His grandfather, James Warner, whose brothers and uncles were all good amateur athletes, migrated from North Carolina many years ago to become one of the few black coal miners in the community. James’ daughter, Curt’s mother, now lives in Cleveland. She and Curt communicate once in a while, he said.

Curt’s brother, Robert, known as Pee Wee, was a year older, an inch or two shorter and the best athlete in Wyoming in the days when they used to play pickup games from morning until night. The only black kids in town, Curt and Pee Wee were always elected captains, after which they always chose up sides fairly, after which Pee Wee always won.

“He beat me in everything,” Curt said. “But I never gave up. Never.”

Paterno once described that as Curt’s dominant quality.

“He was very driven--he was driven to excel,” Paterno said. “That’s positive, but it can also be self-destructive.”

Paterno said that the year before Warner ran his knee out in the Kingdome.

Warner enjoyed playing for Paterno except for a stretch of four or five games early in his senior season, when Penn State quit running and began throwing the ball with Blackledge, the quarterback who led Warner’s team to the 1982 national championship.

One Saturday that month after Warner had been held to 65 yards, a reporter asked him if this hurt his Heisman Trophy chances.

Warner tried to answer but couldn’t, bursting into tears. A gifted athlete with a driven personality doesn’t need the Heisman, perhaps, but Warner feared that Paterno was costing him his chance to be a high draft choice in the NFL.

He cried it out, and went back to work. And a week later, he made a big run to reach 100 yards again.

“A running back on a 100-yard day is like a kid with 100 candy bars,” Blackledge said.

On the whole, Warner is happier in Seattle than he was at Penn State. The Seattle coaches and fans seem to appreciate him more.

Last year when he returned to the Seahawk practice facility for the first time after his accident, he limped in to pick up a record assortment of get-well messages.

The largest of those cards--sent over by the football fans at the telephone company--measured 1,449 yards long.

This commemorated Warner’s first season in Seattle, when he gained precisely 1,449 yards.

After a year off, when he returned to the Kingdome on his rehabilitated knee this summer, his fans gave Warner a wild, standing ovation after his first run.

It celebrated a gain of precisely one yard.

But the crowd knew there’d be more where that one came from.