They Tried, Now Must Try Again : Charger Rookies Fight for Jobs Left Behind

Joe MacEsker is a huge man, but these have been a weighty four weeks, and Thursday afternoon, he spoke softly.

“We’re rookies. We had to go with the flow; we couldn’t make waves,” said the 6-foot, 7-inch, 305-pound Charger rookie lineman, an eighth-round draft pick from Texas El Paso. “But look at us now. We’ve living day to day. We’re walking on eggshells.”

There will be many scars left by the NFL strike, but few more notable than the ones left on those who have spent this week looking over their shoulders because they are afraid to look ahead.

These are the rookies, and their strike was a different one.

The veterans had a choice to stay out. The rookies believed they had to stay out.

The veterans returned with their jobs ensured. The rookies did not.

The veterans lost most of the money. The rookies stand to lose much more. They stand to lose their dreams.

“It was the longest four weeks of my life,” said Rod Bernstine, a rookie tight end.

And he is a No. 1 draft pick.

Here are four of the nine Charger rookies who aren’t holding the big names or big money. They are rookies, who, after fighting for six weeks to make the club, now think that they must resume the fight.

--Jamie Holland, wide receiver, seventh-round draft pick from Ohio State.

He was a low choice who beat the odds to make the team. Then, for the first time in his life, he found something he couldn’t outrun.

“All of the work I’ve done in my life, it was all paying off; then, after two games, it was done,” he said. “I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with my family. I was in all kinds of depressions. Would I make the team when I got back? What would happen?

“But I couldn’t go home. I had to show my family that I could be a man and stick up for what I believed in.”

He did leave San Diego briefly for a visit to his alma mater. He watched the Buckeyes lose to Indiana. While he was gone, replacement receiver Al Williams, a training camp buddy, announced to the media that Holland should be worried about Williams taking his job.

Williams said, “I’m surprised a guy like Jamie Holland is not thinking about crossing the picket line.”

Holland was stunned.

“At my first strike practice since being out of town, everybody was saying, ‘You better catch that ball. Al Williams is doing a lot of talking,’ ” Holland said. “I thought it was a joke. I thought I knew Al. I thought, ‘He’s competing against Wes Chandler, he’s not competing against me. Why does he have to go blab about me, put more pressure on me?’ I thought he was my friend. But he’s no friend of mine.”

All of this caused Holland to worry more.

“I got depressed again, and friends were coming by, saying to me, ‘Don’t cross the line just because Al says your job is in jeopardy.’ I didn’t know what to think.

“Then my parents heard about it and starting calling me about coming home again. I turned the ring off. This is my life. I wouldn’t come home.”

Holland is back to work now, but he doesn’t know for how long, and he cannot forget.

“It was all a tragic feeling,” he said. “It was like I have no control over nothing.”

--Karl Wilson, defensive end, third-round pick from Louisiana State.

During the strike, all rookies felt pressure from the veteran players. But Wilson felt extra pressure.

His father, William, is a Teamsters president in Baton Rouge, La.

“All of my dad’s friends kept asking him, ‘Is Karl staying out, is Karl staying out?’ ” he said. “So if I don’t go out, my daddy pulls me out.”

His father educated him on Teamster strikes. His father scared him.

“He told me if it was him, he wouldn’t be so easy on strikebreakers,” Wilson said. “He told me that their strikebreakers never had a chance. They would go to their houses and throw bricks through their windows.

“But I’m not like that. I couldn’t do any of that. And I didn’t. But I realized, if I cross the picket line, it’s going to be much tougher on me mentally than if I stay out. I would feel like such a traitor.”

And the longer he stayed out, the less he understood why.

“At first, I really liked what the players were doing, then I saw all these union guys going back. I’m thinking, ‘What are they going back for? Do they know something I don’t know?’ I wondered why I was out here.

“I had worked so hard to get to this point. Why can’t I just play football?”

Even though the strike is settled, Wilson doesn’t feel settled.

“I might stay on the team, I might not,” he said. “It’s like training camp again. I don’t make it, I go home and try again next year. At this point, what else can I do?”

--Mark Vlasic, quarterback, fourth-round draft pick from Iowa.

He made the team ahead of Rick Neuheisel, who returned to lead the Chargers’ replacement team to a 3-0 record.

While earning a degree in finance and playing for a Big Ten football power, Vlasic always felt in control until now.

“As a rookie in the strike, you can’t fully understand what’s going on,” he said. “You don’t know what wasn’t there in 1974-82. You don’t know what you are trying to accomplish, because you don’t know how bad it was, or how bad it’s going to be.

“I hate to say it, but I was on a go-with-the-flow mode. I had no other choice.”

Playing such a high-profile position made it harder for Vlasic. For three Sunday afternoons, he couldn’t help but notice his replacement competition.

“It was really hard watching the other guys play,” he said. “I went through camp, I earned a position. Now, I’ve nothing.”

With a week left in the strike, he became so frustrated he started thinking about another job.

“It crossed all the young guys’ minds--’What are we doing?’ I know I’ve got a degree. I know I could be working in real life, doing other things. I thought about jobs. There was nights I just lay there, thinking about everything.

“It’s bad enough, coming into the league with all this uncertainty. Now this. It was so uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to react.”

With four quarterbacks on the team again--including the addition of replacement Neuheisel--Vlasic is still trying to come to terms with the proper reaction.

“So I’ve got to come back and fight for a spot again,” he said. “I have to learn to accept that.”

--Nelson Jones, defensive back, fifth-round pick from North Carolina State.

In the second exhibition game, he had stretched the ligaments in his left ankle. He was placed on injured reserve. With proper treatment, he would be ready in a month.

Then came the strike, when Jones learned that even if you can barely walk a picket line, you still can’t cross it. By choosing to stay out of work, he forfeited his club medical treatment. His ankle rehabilitation was placed at risk.

Monday, on the Chargers’ first day of work after the strike, Jones stepped on the foot of tight end Pete Holohan. The ankle popped. The ligaments were torn.

He’s now wearing a knee-high brace and doubts he will play before Thanksgiving.

“As soon as it happened Monday, I thought, ‘Why?’ ” Jones said. “I thought, of all the things to happen, why this? Why me?”

During the strike, he returned to North Carolina State and saw the school’s trainer. Then he went home to New Jersey and saw the family doctor. He returned to San Diego, attended the strikers’ practices, iced the ankle afterward, felt better . . .

“Then I get out here on the first day and step on Holohan,” he said. “I got right up, because if I had stayed down, it would have gotten stiff. And I continued to practice. I’m too afraid to tell anybody.

“But I could feel it swell. Underneath the tape, I could feel it getting bigger.”

He went home that night and, because of the pain, couldn’t sleep.

“I lay there praying, hoping to get through Tuesday, thinking everything would be fine. But during the individual drills Tuesday, I couldn’t take it anymore. It hurt too bad. I had to come out.”

FO Jamie Holland couldn’t catch up to this exhibition-game pass, but he did catch on with the Chargers.