Brock’s Career Takes a Detour : Injured Ram Quarterback May Have Reached End of Trail

Quarterback Dieter Brock could have assumed that the nightmare was over when the Rams’ 1985 season finally came crashing down on him last January at Soldier Field in Chicago.

As bad memories go, what could be worse than that game and those stats? In the Bears’ 24-0 NFC championship victory over the Rams, Brock completed 10 of 31 passes for 66 yards.

He was kind of like the lab experiment that had gone wrong.

The Rams had scooped the 34-year-old Brock out of the Canadian Football League and made him an instant NFL rookie.

But not an instant star. In fact, he won one newspaper’s poll as worst quarterback in town.

Nothing, seemingly, could be worse than 1985.

Well, consider 1986.

“I’d much rather be getting badgered (by reporters),” Brock said this week. “At least I would know that I was doing something.”

For Brock, this has been a season of injury and tragedy, the year he dropped off the roster and all but out of sight.

There is no joy in spending a season on the injured-reserve list. But arthroscopic knee surgery put him there in September, and a chronic, career-threatening back injury may keep him there indefinitely.

Forever? Well, the Rams choose their words carefully when discussing the future of their quarterbacks, and Brock is a subject they won’t discuss at all.

Still, all the pain in a man’s knee and back could not match what Brock felt in mid-September, when his older brother, Bill, died suddenly in Alabama.

“It just puts you in your place,” Brock said. “You just feel like other things aren’t that important.”

Bill Brock’s death was brought on by an epileptic seizure. Dieter said his brother, who had suffered with epilepsy for about 10 years, had a seizure at night and fell from his bed. The fall knocked him unconscious, and Bill choked to death on his tongue.

Dieter said he didn’t think his brother was taking the medication prescribed for controlling the seizures. Bill Brock was a year and a half older than Dieter.

“I was always following him around when I was growing up,” Brock said. “He got me interested in sports. He got me involved playing with older guys, and I think that made me a better player.”

Brock spent four days in Alabama, returning only to discover that the Rams had signed Purdue quarterback Jim Everett.

That didn’t seem to help matters.

“You’ve got to go on with life,” Brock said. “It’s not easy. I lost my brother. But you’ve got to continue. You can’t say to hell with life. You’ve got to pick yourself back up.”

The bad news season began for Brock on Aug. 5, during the Rams’ first exhibition game against the Houston Oilers. Though the Rams had signed free agent Steve Bartkowski in the off-season, Brock started against the Oilers.

Late in the first quarter, Brock’s left knee was struck by Oiler safety Bo Eason. Brock left the game, had surgery the next week and was put on injured reserve Sept. 2, making him ineligible for the Rams’ first four games of the season.

About a month ago, Brock tested the knee in a passing drill at Rams Park. The knee was fine, but Brock aggravated an old back injury.

Brock said the back problem goes back to 1982, when he was playing for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the CFL, though Ram Coach John Robinson said he wasn’t aware of the back injury when the Rams signed Brock in March 1985.

Brock has a degenerative disk in his lower back, and doctors have told him the condition cannot be corrected by surgery.

The injury is aggravated by the very nature of Brock’s position. He jars his back whenever he plants his back foot to throw. He wrenches it every time he winds up to release a pass.

“I’ve tried all the exercises they’ve suggested,” Brock said. “I’m not getting results.”

Brock, in what he described as his last chance, is taking a series of injections, largely cortisone-based, which coat the nerves around the disk and reduce the swelling.

Brock got his third injection Thursday.

“Is it worth taking all this stuff if it’s not going to work?” Brock asked. “I don’t know. I’ve got to try. I still want to play. I can’t stand coming over here and not being able to do anything. That’s the worst part.”

Brock says now that his back has been a problem since he joined the team in rookie camp in 1985.

“I didn’t want to say too much about it,” Brock said. “I hoped it would go away in the off-season, but it never really did. John (Robinson) got me down here (from Canada), so I just said to myself that I couldn’t let it mess me up.”

Brock played the season and was the target for weekly criticism. But nothing during the regular season compared to the media shelling he took after the Rams’ loss to the Bears.

Brock chooses not to read newspapers, but he said this week that he has been unfairly treated in Los Angeles.

“If I’m going to get criticized for that last game, well, it was a championship game,” Brock said. “You’d think I’d have done something right in the 12 games it took to get us there. No one wanted to give me credit for anything.”

Brock set a Ram record by completing 59.7% of his passes and was the NFL’s eighth-rated passer in 1985.

But the Ram offense was plodding and run-oriented, and Brock was hit with much of the blame.

“A lot has to do with the system,” Brock said. “A guy with good ability in a good system will have good stats. What would (Dan) Marino and (Dan) Fouts do if they only threw 20 times a game.”

Brock doesn’t care to predict what his future with the Rams will bring. Robinson will not discuss Brock’s future either.

With Brock’s age, 35, and back problems, a trade doesn’t seem likely. Nor is it likely that the Rams will keep five quarterbacks. Currently, rookie Hugh Millen and Brock are on injured reserve, and Bartkowski, Steve Dils and Everett are on the active roster.

Does this spell the end for Brock?

“I’m not concerned,” he said. “They can make whatever decision they want to make. I just want to get healthy enough to play.”

Ram Notes Ram guard Dennis Harrah flew home to West Virginia Thursday for personal reasons. He is expected to join the team in Atlanta for Sunday’s game against the Falcons. . . . Henry Ellard and the Indianapolis Colts have reached an oral agreement on the money it would take to sign the holdout wide receiver should the Rams decide to trade him before Tuesday’s NFL trading deadline. Ellard’s agent, Mike Blatt, said the Colts were willing to pay Ellard $1.39 million for three years, Ellard’s asking price with the Rams. The Colts are believed to be offering the Rams second- and third-round draft choices for Ellard, but the Rams reportedly want a first-round pick. Colt General Manager Jim Irsay had no comment on the situation Thursday, but he told an Indianapolis reporter earlier this week that the team’s No. 1 pick was “off limits.”