Ex-Raider Squirek Uses His Head, Quits the Game

If he had eyes in the back of his head, Jack Squirek might still be here.

But then, if Joe Theismann had eyes in the back of his head, we might never have met Jack Squirek.

Squirek’s football life was marked by two plays. During the 1984 Super Bowl, he stepped in front of a screen pass thrown by Theismann and stepped into the end zone. The touchdown gave his team a 21-3 lead over the Washington Redskins at halftime.

His Raider teammates mobbed him. He went from zone coverage to the cover of Sports Illustrated. They gave him the key to his home city. They gave him a parade. He was embarrassed.

In an exhibition game the next fall, he was covering a running back. His eyes were locked into the back’s belly. So he never saw the crack-back block coming.

He took a blow to the face. He thought all his teeth were in the grass. He touched his mouth and felt the blood. But he couldn’t feel his jaw. He was embarrassed.

So that was it. He never played linebacker again. Oh, he tried playing linebacker, but his eyes wandered too much. He kept waiting for another crack-back block. In the meantime, his teammates were tackling the ballcarriers.

“I was never the same,” Squirek said.

Jack Squirek finally quit football for good last Monday. Actually, he quit Sunday. In broad daylight--after an early-morning workout with the San Diego Chargers--he hopped a cab to the San Diego airport and flew home to Valley View, Ohio. He will make rugs for a living. And you know what? He’s not embarrassed.

The Chargers were Squirek’s third team in two years. He was the Raiders’ last cut in 1986, and then he quit the Miami Dolphins a few months later.

All because of his jaw. Gritting his teeth while lifting weights, his head would hurt. Hitting a running back, his head would hurt. Naturally, he became concerned. He played cautiously. Good linebackers do not play cautiously.

Jack Squirek gets embarrassed at three things: Fame, shame and feeling lame. In a nutshell, that’s what happened. The Super Bowl brought fame, the injury brought shame and the after-effects left him feeling lame.

Steve Ortmayer, the new Charger director of football operations who used to be with the Raiders, asked him--as a friend--to come to San Diego. Squirek tried but couldn’t go through with it.

“I could have hung in there and tried, but I wasn’t 100%,” Squirek said. “I just felt like I was playing tentative. . . . The last two years, I’ve been feeling like this, but I hung in there. Now . . . Listen, I’m not happy just getting by. I want to excel.”

The Chargers say he probably would have made the team.

That wasn’t enough.

“Listen, it was a big decision,” Squirek said.

He made this one on his own, not with any help from his father, Jack Squirek Sr., or from Ortmayer. That’s why he left camp Sunday, when nobody was looking.

“I knew Steve Ortmayer would probably talk me into staying, so I just walked out,” Squirek said. “This way, I wouldn’t cause a commotion. I’d do what I wanted to do, and no one would talk me into anything. It was just my way of doing things.”

At home, Dad was mad. Not so much at his son, but because of the circumstances. After the jaw injury, Squirek played seven weeks later.

“He came back too soon,” the elder Squirek said. “(The Raiders) rushed him into playing. He could feel that bone moving when he made tackles. After that, he started getting headaches.”

Squirek thinks maybe his son ought to sue the Raiders. Doesn’t everybody?

“Ah, you know how parents are,” Jack Jr. said.

Jack Sr. said: “Well, it hurts when someone’s such a great athlete, and it gets wasted.”

But was it really all a waste? Jack Jr. doesn’t much like talking about the touchdown he scored, but he reminisced because he was asked to.

“It’s part of history, you know,” he said. “I guess that’s good, but I guess that’s bad, too. See, I always wanted to be remembered as a good, consistent player.

“Oh, I don’t know. It was fun. It happened so fast, I can’t recall if I was keying in on Joe Washington (for whom the pass was intended). All I remember is being in the end zone and having all the people around me. And I remember feeling numb.”

The way his jaw feels sometimes.