O’Neal: Taking It Day by Day : Injured Charger Is Casual About Future

The prognosis is guarded, as they say in medical circles. The patient, however, is not worried.

Leslie O’Neal, the Chargers’ highly acclaimed young defensive end, doesn’t know when he will be able to walk normally, much less run or play football. He suffered a severe knee injury in November and, despite a program of rehabilitation that is progressing well, may not be able to play in 1987.

But O’Neal never has looked very far over the horizon, and he isn’t going to start now. His low-key approach always has yielded agreeable results.

“I never really planned on a career in pro football,” said O’Neal, 22. “It wasn’t a lifetime dream for me, like it is for many players. What this injury has done is make me realize there is another lifetime besides football.”

O’Neal is a mixture of naivete and modesty, yet he also has drive and high expectations. He is pleasant, introverted and understated. Perhaps his most interesting characteristic is his casual, almost indifferent attitude toward the future.

“When I was growing up, I never saw myself doing anything, really, as far as a job or working somewhere,” he said. “I never really worried about it because I felt I could talk to people well enough to get a job.

“Whenever it was time for me to make a decision about something, there would always be an opportunity available. At the end of my junior year of high school, I had a lot of letters (scholarship offers) to play college football. After college (Oklahoma State), I had the NFL. I guess I have been lucky.”

Lucky--and good.

“I’ve never thought of being ordinary at anything,” he said. “I’ve always thought I was a good football player. I might not have the most talent, but people know I’ll be there for the duration of the game, and whoever I go against knows he will have to work to beat me. I never want anyone to think I’m easy to duck.”

He is proud of having been named defensive rookie of the year by the Associated Press. But he said he was shocked recently when Washington defensive lineman Dexter Manley congratulated him on his superb first season in the National Football League.

“I never thought I played so well that other players would notice me,” said O’Neal, who had 13 sacks in 12 games--including five against the Dallas Cowboys--before being hurt in Indianapolis in the 13th game.

As he spoke, O’Neal was flat on his back in the Chargers’ training room in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. He had just undergone one of his daily, two-hour rehabilitation sessions with trainer Mark Howard.

There was an ice pack taped to his left knee, which bears a scar about as long as a football, thanks to reconstructive surgery to mend torn ligaments.

He recently discarded the crutches that had accompanied him everywhere since November. He still can’t completely straighten his leg, and he is at least two weeks away from being able to lift weights to rebuild atrophied muscles.

The Chargers are not pressuring him to attempt too much too soon. Coach Al Saunders said he doesn’t want to count on O’Neal this year, fearing that a premature return could damage or end a promising career.

Howard is even more circumspect. “This has to be handled methodically, day by day,” he said. “Leslie is anxious, but he knows he can’t get better overnight. I try to keep him busy enough where he won’t think about long-term goals. If he has a day where he isn’t progressing, he gets more determined. It’s like holding an apple in front of a horse to get him to move.”

Howard declined to predict when O’Neal would return to do what he does best--sack quarterbacks.

“Leslie is not thinking in terms of whether he will play this year, and neither am I,” Howard said. “We are not wasting words in discussing a prognosis. It would be setting an unrealistic goal to say he would return in six months. That would put pressure on him that wouldn’t be healthy for his rehabilitation. It takes a year, plus or minus three months, for rehabilitation from the surgery he had.”

O’Neal has made substantial progress, but he is still 15 to 20 degrees short of having full range of motion in his knee, Howard said. Once he regains full movement, he must strengthen the muscles that support the knee before he can begin to run.

He recently took part in a charity bowling tournament sponsored by Charger quarterback Dan Fouts. He also played a round of golf with Terry Unrein, another hobbling second-year defensive lineman with the Chargers.

“I know I’m not a great bowler,” he said, “but if I had to do it, I’d find a way to be competitive. I’d find a way to survive.”

And his golf game? “I play a sorry man’s game of golf,” he said. “I might shoot 80--for nine holes. It’s just a reason to be outside. I need to walk constantly, to help my leg. It’s good, safe fun.”

O’Neal seems to have no doubt that he will be back with the Chargers and be as good as ever. He just doesn’t know when.

After soaking his leg in a whirlpool, going through manual resistance exercises with Howard and riding a stationary bicycle, he was in a reflective mood. He wonders how his quickness will be affected, and whether he will have a long career in the NFL.

“I try to keep the uncertainty at a distance,” he said. “Regardless of how much I think about all this, it won’t do any good until I know more than I do now. I just have to leave it like that.

“I’m sure I will be apprehensive the first time I go back on the field. But I should be totally confident again in a short time; you forget about all that stuff in the heat of a game.”

O’Neal doesn’t think about his sack totals during a game, but he is keenly aware of them at other times. He regards his sack statistics as the ultimate measuring stick of his worth as a player.

“I realize there were games last year when I didn’t have any sacks, like against Dan Marino of Miami,” he said. “When I got five against Dallas, it released a lot of frustration. It’s hard for me to judge myself, but I can’t say I’m good unless I have the stats. Some other people (teammates and coaches) said I had a good game against Miami, but, hey, I didn’t get any sacks, did I?”

Charger defensive coaches are less critical. Ron Lynn, the defensive coordinator, and Gunther Cunningham, the defensive line coach, said last fall that they think O’Neal and teammate Lee Williams could become the best pair of pass rushers in the NFL.

The uncertainty about O’Neal’s return may force the Chargers to draft a defensive lineman this spring. They have other defensive priorities, including linebacker and cornerback.

O’Neal has spent enough time in rehabilitation to think deeply about the toll football takes on a man’s body and psyche. Without downplaying the central role of football in his life at the moment, he is careful not to exaggerate its place in his future.

“Football is where my life starts in terms of income, publicity and connections to other things,” he said. “I hope to play long enough to invest in other things.

“But there are other parts of my life, too, and I think about how they have been affected. For example, I was going to go back to school to finish my degree (personnel management), but I’ve had to push back those plans because of my injury. If I can’t come back, I’ll get my degree and other doors will open for me.”

If he had incurred such a serious injury after seven or eight years in the NFL, O’Neal said, he might have second thoughts about a comeback.

“If we had been to a Super Bowl and I was at the peak of my career, I might ask myself, ‘What do I have to gain by playing again?’ ” O’Neal said. “I can’t say I’d give up football, but I’d have to think about it.”

There’s no doubt that he wants to return to the Chargers.

“What I want is to prove I can be a dominant person in the NFL and play on a Super Bowl champion,” he said. “I’ve never been on a team where I played a major role in accomplishing the final thing--a championship.”

O’Neal did have an impact at Oklahoma State. While he was there, the team made three bowl appearances and averaged eight victories a year. But it never beat Oklahoma or Nebraska, and O’Neal said he will never forget that.

“I’d hate to think of playing in San Diego for 10 years and never beat the Raiders or win the AFC West,” he said. “I surely wouldn’t be happy in that situation.

“But, hey, I really respect players who have to be on teams like that. It’s easy to play for a winner, but not when you are on a team that knows the minute it walks on the field it doesn’t have a chance.”

The 1986 Chargers had a 4-12 record, but O’Neal said it could have been 10-5 if the defense had been sounder in the closing minutes of several games.

“The hardest thing for me,” he said, “would be to go through a year with a lot of games where the team wasn’t close to winning. I never felt we didn’t have a chance last year.”

The Chargers will have a somewhat softer schedule in 1987, but their chances of compiling a winning record would be significantly greater with a healthy O’Neal. The best guess is that they will have to do without him, in the hope that he will be fully recovered by 1988.