A LOOK AT SUNDAY’S RAIDER, RAM OPPONENTS : DYNAMITE DARRIN : If the Vikings Would Give Him the Ball, Running Back Nelson Could Do It All

The 1982 National Football League draft was the year of the running back, and Darrin Nelson came out running ahead of them all. And catching passes. And running back punts. And kickoffs.

In four seasons at Stanford, he slashed and dashed and whirled like a human food processor. Foes didn’t waste time looking for the ball. They just looked for Nelson, because he always had it.

He was the first college player to rush for 1,000 yards and catch 50 passes in the same season, and he did it three times. He ran right past Archie Griffin, Tony Dorsett and Charles White to become the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s all-time all-purpose yardage leader with 6,885.

No wonder the Minnesota Vikings, drafting seventh, liked him better than Arizona State’s Gerald Riggs, who was taken ninth by the Atlanta Falcons--even more than USC’s Marcus Allen, claimed 10th by the Raiders.

Later in the first round, Baylor’s Walter Abercrombie went to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Richmond’s Barry Redden to the Rams, Michigan’s Butch Woolfolk to the New York Giants and San Jose State’s Gerald Willhite to the Denver Broncos--without the benefit of hindsight, a vintage crop, with Nelson the premium choice, U.S. Grade AA.

Clear the track and give him the ball--here comes Dynamite Darrin.

Ahem. We said, “Give him the ball.”

You know, No. 20? The guy who does it all?

“The Vikings weren’t looking for an All-Pro running back when they drafted me,” Nelson said the other day. “They were looking for a guy that could go in and catch passes and run a certain amount of plays, just like I did in college.

“When you look at the All-Pros now, it’s guys that are handling the ball an awful lot. I really don’t handle the ball much--about 12 times a game on the average, and I think it’s gone down this year, but there isn’t anything I can really do about it.”

Nelson’s statistics for 71 games in five-plus seasons show that he has handled the ball only 13.8 times a game--9.7 rushing attempts, 2.6 pass receptions, half a punt return and one kickoff return.

A workhorse he is not.

By comparison, Allen, who will be on the opposite side against Nelson at Minneapolis Sunday, has played two more games in his pro career and is averaging 18.8 rushes and 4 receptions.

At Nelson’s current rate, he should last longer in the game than George Blanda. One would think he was coached by the little old lady from Pasadena.

Heck, the Vikings don’t even let him return punts anymore. That half a return a game can wear a guy out.

The Vikings feared that Nelson, at 5 feet 9 inches and 185 pounds, would get blown away in a blizzard or lost in a snowbank. The first year he was there, they didn’t even let him go out to play. They built the Metrodome.

This season, the Vikings were still worried about overworking Nelson, so they spent another first-round choice on D.J. Dozier of Penn State. The two alternate at halfback--alternate, except that Dozier seems to be getting a larger slice of the football.

Dozier, bigger and stronger at 6 feet and 198 pounds, gets all of the goal-line action. And while Nelson was missing most of two games with a tender knee and later a back injury, Dozier was scoring six touchdowns, second in the NFL. With the strike, his injuries and all, Nelson hasn’t scored any.

Oh, the Vikings did give him something new to do: play messenger. While every other team in the league signals the plays in to the quarterback, Coach Jerry Burns has them delivered by his running backs.

“It gets kind of bothersome because you don’t get into the flow of the game,” Nelson said. “It’s really hard to get into a groove running the ball when you’re coming in and out of the game all the time.

“But as far as being fresh (goes), that’s a plus.”

Still, if the Vikings are trying to protect him by limiting his exposure, it hasn’t worked.

“This has really been a strange year,” Nelson said. “I do a lot less than I normally do--about half as much--but I’m getting beat up.

“In my last three years, I think I missed one game, and now I’ve missed two already because of the knee surgery I had earlier in the year and because of my back last week.”

The Vikings figured they couldn’t have prevented the back injury when they heard Nelson had hurt it carrying a turntable downstairs at home.

“Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t fall down the stairs,” he said. “I told our trainer that I slipped down two stairs carrying a turntable, (and) that story got started.

“I really hurt it on the first running play from scrimmage against Denver. A guy jumped on my back and twisted it. It didn’t really bother me until the next day.”

Between his injuries, he and the other Viking regulars had to watch helplessly as their strike team went 0-3 and took them out of contention in the NFC Central. The real team, now 3-1, was undefeated until last Sunday’s 28-17 loss to Seattle.

“Our team here has lost only one game,” Nelson said. “It’s difficult for everyone on our team to take. It wouldn’t feel as bad if we had lost those games ourselves, but having no say about it whatsoever kind of hurt.

“I didn’t even watch for three weeks--just picked up a newspaper to see what happened. It was a bad situation. You want ‘em to win, and if they lose, you’re doubly disappointed because you’re already on strike.

“The Vikings were one of the last teams to assemble a strike team. We didn’t (have one) until Thursday or Friday. Most teams had ‘em in there the day of the strike (Tuesday, Sept. 22) or the day after.

“I think we waited a long time because our general manager (Mike Lynn) had some kind of inside information as to exactly how long the strike was going to last. He didn’t think there would be a strike, and as a result that hurt us.”

The Vikings also have been overshadowed by the Twins’ World Series triumph but haven’t enjoyed a spinoff of the high-decibel enthusiasm that rattled the Metrodome.

“It’s really not that noisy when we play,” Nelson said.

“You have to look at it this way: When the Twins were struggling to win, there wasn’t a lot of noise. You know how fans are. Our games can be sold out, but our fans are real conservative. They only yell when they have to. Seattle’s people yell all the time. Our fans aren’t like that.”

Nelson has thought of becoming a part-time cheerleader. He doesn’t have much else to do these days.