LEWIS WALKS AWAY : For a While, Though, Packer Cornerback Wasn’t Sure He Could Even Do That

His spinal cord was severed. Yes, Tim Lewis decided as he lay motionless on the damp grass of Green Bay’s Lambeau Field Sept. 22, that’s what had happened. Severed, as easily as you’d slice through a loaf of Velveeta.

Lewis, a Packer cornerback, told himself he would never walk again. He would be put in a wheelchair and his legs would shrivel up and die, but never his spirit. Even as team physicians called for a stretcher to scrape him off the ground, Lewis already had made up his mind: “Take the legs, but I’m staying”--that sort of thing.

And he did. While on the stretcher, he began to feel the tingle of life return to parts of his body. By the time he arrived at St. Vincent Hospital, Lewis was able to move arms and legs and toes and fingers. He could lift his head and roll his eyes. He could smile. He could cry.

So swift was Lewis’ recovery that Forrest Gregg, the Packer coach, told reporters after the Monday night loss to the Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears that Lewis had “jammed his neck. He’s all right.” Packer officials went so far as to predict that Lewis would miss at least one game.

Try a career.

Lewis is fine now. He can walk and talk, tinker with the plumbing, shop for groceries . . . do anything, really. Except play football. He can never play football again.

Nowadays, Lewis will watch football on television, like the Iowa-Ohio State game he caught on the tube last weekend while sipping a beer and eating a sandwich. He was in town for a job interview, something in finance perhaps. Sales is a possibility. He has an economics degree and enough deferred money and investments so that any career choices aren’t made out of desperation but from desire. Coaching is another option.

“Watch the corner(back) here,” he said, gesturing toward the screen. “He had him and then he let the receiver stiff-arm him and get away. And of course, he doesn’t catch the guy.”

A replay shows the Ohio State receiver pushing the Iowa defensive back aside and then breaking free for a touchdown. “Just missed him,” Lewis said.

Later in the day, he’ll drive north to Green Bay. A magazine wants him to pose for a photograph at Lambeau Field, something for an update about career-ending injuries. On Sunday, he might watch the Packer game. Maybe, maybe not. Now that the Packers have put him on the injured-reserve list, Lewis isn’t quite sure what to do with his time.

There are assorted medical descriptions for Lewis’ condition. Simply put, though, his spinal canal is too narrow and susceptible to bruises. Another hit like the last one and Lewis might not be so lucky, his body not as cooperative. It can’t take the beating, not that the human body was meant for football anyway.

Lewis’ job required him to possess the speed and quickness of a rum runner, the nerve of an alley cat and the strength to survive unwelcome visits from oncoming Neanderthals, otherwise known as offensive linemen. Linemen love finding itsy bitsy cornerbacks and flattening them with their Buick bodies.

Cornerbacks are hybrids of sort, part pirate, part receiver. How bothersome they are when they do their jobs correctly, like bees with reusable stingers. How silly and bare they look when beaten on long pass plays. Humiliation is just a flick of the wrist away.

Lewis didn’t mind. At 5 feet 11 inches and 191 pounds, he had the look of a cornerback: sleek, confident, just the right mix of arrogance.

In the 39 games he had started since 1983, Lewis had 16 interceptions, including a 99-yard touchdown return against the Rams in 1984--a Green Bay record. “Tim was going to be a perennial All-Pro,” said Ken Riley, former Cincinnati Bengal cornerback star who coached the Packer defensive backs for two seasons before leaving to become coach at Florida A&M; this season. “Tim wanted to be an All-Pro cornerback.”

When he was a kid growing up in Pennridge, Pa., Lewis collected football cards. He was a running back in high school, and it would have taken about 20 Riley cards to loosen his grip on a single O.J. Simpson. That changed. By the time he left the University of Pittsburgh as a second-team All-American, you would have needed a court order to get him to swap a Riley. “Ken was pretty much an idol for me,” Lewis said.

Here was Lewis’ plan when he arrived at Green Bay as a first-round draft choice: He would play about 8-10 years and, upon retirement, be voted into “at least” the Packer Hall of Fame. Someday, just maybe, he’d wind up in the NFL Hall of Fame and along the way, get into a big playoff game, proving once and for all that the Pack was back. “The Super Bowl . . . I don’t think that was so farfetched, either.”

Lewis then would become a Pro Bowl player and, as a final jewel, surpass Riley’s 65 interceptions, fourth-highest in the NFL. “I always wanted to beat Ken,” he said.

Said Riley: “I used to challenge him all the time on that. If one of them missed a ball I’d say, ‘You guys are never going to catch me if you keep dropping passes.’ ”

In the Packer Hall of Fame, a two-level building just across the street from Lambeau Field, there is a large display board. “Who holds these Packer records?” it reads. Want to know who scored the most points in a single season? You press a button and a photograph of Paul Hornung appears on a screen.

On occasion, Lewis would visit the display. He’d press the button for Longest Interception Return and up would pop a photo of good ‘ ol Rebel Steiner, circa 1950. So off went Lewis, the historian, to the Hall of Fame director , asking, all in good fun, when the slide might be replaced. After all, it was Lewis’ record.

Now when you press the button, a smiling mug of Lewis appears.

There’s another button for most interceptions, career. Bobby Dillon, is the answer. Lewis would look at Dillon’s photo and think: “Hey, I’m well on my way. I’ll play another six or seven years.”

He shakes his head now at the irony of it all. “What a trip,” he said.

On the final day of Lewis’ playing career, friends arrived from out of town to watch the Packer-Bear game. The Packers were 0-2 and decided underdogs to the Bears. No matter, the friends came to see Lewis, not the struggling Packers.

After a poor performance against the Houston Oilers in the season opener, Lewis had been treated to a lecture by Gregg. Gregg questioned Lewis’ attitude.

“When you scolded (Lewis), he was like a little child,” Riley said. “You could see the hurt in his face. He took things very seriously.”

By the Chicago game, Lewis was playing better. He didn’t have any interceptions, but those would come--they always did. Lewis always could make the big play, Riley said.

Lewis and his friends visited the Packer Hall of Fame. The button worked this time.

When it was time to leave, Lewis got to his car . . . and discovered a flat tire. By the time he got it fixed, he was late for a brief walk-through practice session. Finally he drove home. He didn’t enjoy the sights.

“I saw my friends carrying my carpet from out of my basement,” he said. “Their pants were all rolled up, their tennis shoes were all wet. I saw them throw my carpet out.

“I had passed the guy who had done the plumbing on my new house. I thought, ‘That’s strange. Someone must have had problems because of the rains.’ It was sort of like, you see smoke in the distance and you say, ‘It’s coming from my general direction, I probably know the person.’ Then you get there and your house is burned down. It was that feeling.”

Lewis’ basement had flooded. “Another knife in the back,” he said. “Things just weren’t going right the whole day.”

When he arrived for the game, Lewis discovered more problems. A superstitious player, he usually taped his own ankles, rather than let a team trainer do it. But each time he ran the tape around his ankles that Monday night, it didn’t feel right. It took him four times until he was satisfied. Then there were his socks: Lewis didn’t know how he wanted to wear them. “A bizarre day,” he said.

Still, Lewis was excited about the game. National television. The Bears. His friends were there, though some of them seemed more interested in the fast-food commercial he had done. The commercial was scheduled for airing twice, between 10:15-10:30, on a different channel.

Lewis had set his VCR to record the commercial for them. Good thing, too. Every other time he had taped a Packer game, he had gotten hurt. Not this time--different channel.

The Packers were playing well that night. They were losing, but they were still in the game as the third quarter began.

Lewis was doing well, too. He usually found himself covering Bear receiver Willie Gault, the former Olympic sprinter from Tennessee. They had played against one another before and had become friends of a sort during the NFL scouting combine tryouts. Gault was fast, everyone knew that.

“You know he can run, so give him some room,” Riley used to tell Lewis.

Riley taught Lewis to read a receiver’s strides. Gault took long strides on deep patterns, but shortened up on medium routes. So Lewis approached each play against Gault with respect and caution. For almost any other receiver, Lewis would give a six- or seven-yard cushion. For Gault, it was eight or nine yards.

On the last play of the third quarter, Lewis watched Gault move toward his side. For a change of pace, Lewis took a couple of steps toward the line of scrimmage. Earlier, Lewis had been penalized for illegally pushing Gault on a pattern. Bear players yelled at Lewis: “We got you that time.”

Later, Gault had caught a short pass in front of Lewis. No more easy ones, Lewis said to himself. He moved forward.

“I was probably taking too much of a chance,” Lewis said.

Bear quarterback Steve Fuller took the snap, back-pedaled for three steps and then looked toward Gault. It would be Lewis’ final play.

There is a simple philosophy among defensive backs. You punish a receiver for every caught pass or even those that graze fingertips and fall harmlessly to the ground. Do that and you can begin to instill doubt, which usually works a lot better than a prevent zone.

With that in mind, Lewis hurried toward Gault as Fuller released the pass. The pattern was nothing special--that same quick turnaround used earlier. Gault caught the ball and, at the last instant, ducked and twisted his body just as Lewis arrived. “I was already a torpedo coming after him,” Lewis said.

There was a horrific thud, the kind announcers say they can hear in the press box. Lewis’ helmet and neck slammed directly into Gault’s right shoulder, although at first it looked as though they had hit heads. They fell to the ground. Gault got up, Lewis didn’t.

“Had I been back a little farther, he would have had time to see me coming and he would have probably tried to run out of bounds or something like that,” Lewis said. “He may have run toward me and I would have tackled him different.”

In a moment, Lewis was numb, as if his body had been injected with a pint of novocaine. A thousand thoughts ran through his mind, each fighting for attention.

What must his mother be thinking as ABC’s Al Michaels and Frank Gifford spoke in hushed tones to a national television audience about her 24-year-old son?

Would he play again?

Would he ever be able to press that damn button?

“At first I thought, ‘It’s happened before, you’ll be all right, shake it off, go out a couple plays and come back in and finish the game.’ But then, after a while I couldn’t move. I didn’t know I couldn’t move anything until I tried. When I went to move, just my head moved.”

Lewis got scared. He had a sensation of floating, of not being part of his body.

“It’s gonna be all right, it’s coming back, isn’t it?” Lewis said to the Packer physician.

“No,” the doctor said.

Lewis asked one of the trainers to push his arms and legs to the ground. After all, he was on national television and he didn’t want to look silly, what with his limbs sticking straight in the air.

“Hey, buddy, your arms and legs are down,” came the answer.

“Oh, (bleep),” Lewis thought.

He asked a trainer “to put my hands in front of my face.” Lewis didn’t know where anything was anymore.

Nearly 15 minutes passed before they moved Lewis from the field. His spinal cord had been bruised again, just as it had two other times in his career, but Lewis thought otherwise. The cord had been severed, he insisted.

“Then just about everything imaginable flashed into my mind. What I was going to do . . . how I was going to get around . . . other people had been paralyzed . . . it’s not like it’s new to medicine, they’ll be able to make a chair for me . . . I’ll be able to go to school . . .

“It was a cold, absent feeling,” he said. “I mean, your whole life just sort of goes . . . Wow, I was just returning interceptions yesterday. Now I can’t even move.

“I know I sort of went into a state of shock,” he said. “I was mad.”

Bear running back Walter Payton walked toward the stretcher and told Lewis everything would be OK. Gault, too, told Lewis to get better. Packer teammates did the same.

An hour later, Lewis could walk again. As a precautionary measure, he spent the night at St. Vincent, where he was told by Packer physicians that the condition was worsening.

Two years ago, Lewis had missed an entire exhibition schedule because of a similar injury. It happened during a scrimmage when Lewis tackled Packer running back Jesse Clark. Then it happened again in 1984 during the regular season. “But all last year, I didn’t have any problems,” he said.

The day before his meeting with the physicians, Lewis was sent to Milwaukee for tests. The examination showed that he had a narrow spinal canal, “which is what (tests) in ’84 showed, but (doctors) didn’t suggest I stop playing.”

Now they did. They told him that another head tackle could mean tragedy. So he quit--sort of. He still hasn’t sent a formal letter of retirement to the NFL commissioner’s office.

Lewis received cards and letters. Said one: “We hate Willie Gault for hurting you.”

Lewis wrote back and said it wasn’t Gault’s fault. “It was just a reaction,” he said.

Gault called. He told Lewis he was sorry, that he hadn’t meant anything like this to happen. Lewis thanked him and they remain friends.

Meanwhile, Riley hesitated to call his former pupil. “I didn’t know what to say to him,” he said. “It was like having a death in the family. Now I think is the time to talk to him.”

There is still a cubicle with Lewis’ name on it in the Packer locker room. He is, after all, on the team’s injured-reserve list, which entitles him to a paycheck and his mail. It is hard for Lewis. His heart is still in the game. It’s his spinal canal that isn’t.

About 10 days after his injury, Lewis stood on the Packer practice field and decided he wanted a second opinion. And a third. “I wanted to find out for sure,” he said.

So Lewis traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Specialists there told him the same thing: to play was to risk serious, debilitating injury.

It was over.

Already Lewis has heard from his former college coach, Jackie Sherrill, who now directs the Texas A&M; program. Sherrill wants him to go back to school--in College Station--get a graduate degree and maybe talk about some sort of assistant coaching position. Gregg also has offered to help if Lewis decides he wants to learn the coaching business.

And then there is Darryl Stingley, the former all-pro receiver from the New England Patriots, who was paralyzed after a vicious tackle by Oakland Raider defensive back Jack Tatum. It was Stingley who said recently that Lewis never should regret the decision to leave football. “He said he would give all the money in the world to be walking again,” Lewis said.

Lewis finishes his sandwich and takes a last swig from his mug of beer. He has the appointment with the photographer in Green Bay--returning to the scene of the crime and all that. “Right now,” he said, a weariness in his voice, “I’m sort of interested in finding a job, moving on.”

And so he does, step by step. How wonderful each one must feel.