Laughlin Can’t Get Over His Perfect 10 : Ram Linebacker’s 10-Tackle Game Is Journeyman’s Dream Come True

They must have been incredulous in Green Bay, maybe laughing in Atlanta, and Jim Laughlin wasn’t sure he believed it himself.

Ten tackles?

A game ball?

“Yeah,” Laughlin said, shaking his head. “Get in there for one game and play the best game I ever played.”

Laughlin has spent his seven seasons in the National Football League with his suitcase packed and an airline schedule in his pocket. The Rams alone dumped him twice last year, but he kept finding his way back.

The Falcons cut him in 1983, but next Sunday he’ll return to Atlanta, to his home, as a member of the Rams’ starting lineup.

Last Sunday, he showed up at Anaheim Stadium as the starting left inside linebacker against Tampa Bay and was a significant force in the Rams’ 26-20 overtime victory.

Laughlin, understand, didn’t exactly fight his way into the lineup. It’s just that with Carl Ekern hurting and Steve Busick and Jim Collins probably out for the season, he and the other inside starter, Mark Jerue, were about the last inside linebackers left who didn’t limp. Defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur figuratively took a deep breath, closed his eyes and pushed Laughlin onto the field.

“Attrition has a lot to do with it,” Laughlin said. “That’s how I got here in the first place . . . guys going down back in ’84. Eric Harris had a bad back, so they needed guys for special teams. Then last year George (Andrews) got hurt and Woody (Vann) was hurt for a while. If nobody had got hurt I might have sat out the whole year, and that would have been it.”

As a matter of fact, Laughlin, 28, had dug out his business degree from Ohio State and gone home to Atlanta to look for a job.

“When (John) Robinson called, I was out on an interview with a guy at a restaurant, talking about selling securities and stuff. I was shocked. But guys get hurt. That’s the way it works in this league.”

Still, Laughlin didn’t expect to rise from anonymity to getting a game ball in only one week.

“When somebody goes down, everybody’s worried, (saying,) ‘Well, we don’t have Carl in there and he’s the leader of the defense, making all the calls, so how we gonna do?’ ” Laughlin said. “Then when everybody sees you can play, everything’s fine and it makes you feel good.”

The Rams were most concerned about Tampa Bay’s counter off-tackle play, with the variation that has quarterback Steve Young sprinting out to throw a bootleg pass to the tight end.

“That was the big play we had to stop,” Laughlin said. “I didn’t do it very well in practice, and Fritz was yelling at me and I was getting mad at myself, thinking, ‘Holy cow, they’re gonna kill me on Sunday.’ I watched it in films a million times, them doing it against Detroit and Atlanta, and I was getting really nervous about it, but we played it well.”

Shurmur thought that was remarkable because Laughlin, playing behind both Ekern and Busick before they were hurt, hadn’t had any practice at the position in the preceding three weeks.

So Laughlin has tried on stardom, but he isn’t sure it fits. He’ll never agitate to start. When Ekern returns, he’ll never brood about just playing on the bomb squads. He’ll never give John Shaw, the Great Negotiator, a bad time in contract talks. He’ll probably never even meet John Shaw.

“I’m not that kind of guy,” Laughlin says. “I know I’m not a great athlete. I’m not big (he’s 6-1 and 215) and I’m not strong and I’m not fast. I don’t have any great attributes. I don’t think I scare anybody out there at 215.

“I’m not real smart, but I’m smart enough to do the job, and I’m a good special teams player--as good as anybody--so that’s what I’ve been for seven years, and a spot starter when guys get hurt.

“When they get hurt, you have to be able to go in and do a good job--like Fritz says, play efficiently and not make any mistakes.”

Coincidentally, the last starts for Laughlin and quarterback Steve Dils before last Sunday were in 1983, when Laughlin was at Green Bay and Dils at Minnesota. Dils’ side won.

“He had a good day,” Laughlin recalls. “He has it on tape. He said, ‘Yeah, I was watching the tape the other day: “Jim Laughlin on the tackle.” ’ “

Earlier, Laughlin played four years for the Falcons, who drafted him in the fourth round in 1980. He was released by new coach Dan Henning in ’83 but still lives in Atlanta during the off-season.

“I’d made a lot of friends,” he said. “I like the town. It’s a great place to live. I bought some land out in horse country. I figure I’ll settle down there.”

His wife is there now, working as a marketing representative, while Laughlin lives in the Costa Mesa apartment hastily abandoned by Ed Brady when Cincinnati claimed him on waivers from the Rams last summer.

Laughlin learned something from Brady and Mike McDonald: survival. Both are exceptional at snapping the ball for kicks and punts. He thought it might be a valuable talent sometime.

Early this season, when the Rams were having trouble on long snaps, they called on Laughlin.

“I did well against San Francisco, and then against Indianapolis I had one bad one, bounced it back there,” he said. “I think it made John (Robinson) a little nervous.”

So when Robinson brought McDonald back, Laughlin understood.

Sunday he’ll just play linebacker, which is a pounding headache in itself against the hard-running Falcons.