WILLIAMS REPLACES SCHROEDER AS REDSKIN STARTER : Backup Quarterback Steps Forward

This is a city that rolls out of bed thinking controversy.

Scandal? Eats it for breakfast.

Gossip? Where can it sign up?

Unless you’re found on the Capitol steps humming the national anthem and wearing Martha Washington’s hoop skirt, this place couldn’t care less. The Iran- Contra affair was nice while it lasted, as was the supposed affair between the senator and the aspiring model. Otherwise, Dullsville lately.

Then came last Sunday’s Washington Redskins game against the dismal Detroit Lions.

More revered than a good cocktail party, the Redskins have ruled this town for years. Until the recent National Football League player strike, Redskin fans filled RFK Stadium 159 consecutive times. Newborns are on the waiting list for season tickets.

The game against the Lions was supposed to be a convenient little romp, complete with touchdowns galore and a few verses of “Hail to the Redskins” thrown in for good measure.

This also was to have been the game in which quarterback Jay Schroeder, a Pro Bowl selection last season, would return to previous form. No more of this overthrowing and underthrowing wide-open receivers.

Except that it didn’t happen. Schroeder struggled--again, bringing the streak of so-so performances to three. And you know what Joe Theismann, the quarterback Schroeder replaced, has to say about those so-so streaks.

“A slump in football is two or three games,” he said. “If you can’t get out of it . . . they go to the bullpen.”

The Redskins went to the bullpen, plucking a historical landmark of sorts from the sideline.

That would be Doug Williams, 32, a former everything: first-round draft choice of the then-infant Tampa Bay Buccaneers, first personal whipping post of Buccaneer fans, two-season player in the ill-fated United States Football League and, until the Redskins rescued him, outcast.

Midway through the second quarter, the score 3-3, Schroeder put on a Redskin cloak and found a seat on the bench. Coach Joe Gibbs had replaced him with Williams.

By half’s end, the Redskins led by two touchdowns. When it was over, they left RFK with a 20-13 victory, as well as a new starting quarterback: Ta-da, Williams, just in time for Monday night’s game against the Rams.

“It’s what you would call bittersweet,” Williams said in a telephone interview from his home in Zachary, La., where he spent his days off after the Lion game. “It’s bitter to have to go through some of the things I’ve gone through. It’s sweet to get to the point that I am now.

Thing is, Williams has been here before--starting, that is. He did what he could with the expansion Buccaneers, leading them to three playoff appearances in five seasons. And although John McKay often receives credit for drafting Williams in 1978, it was a quiet, bespectacled Tampa assistant named Joe Gibbs who probably had the most to do with the selection.

“He’s the guy who convinced McKay,” Williams said.

Next came those cameo appearances in the USFL, where Williams made a lot of money, but few believers. Too expensive, NFL general managers said. Too erratic.

Too black, maybe?

When the USFL folded, Williams returned to Zachary and waited for the offers to trickle in. Surely some NFL team would need a veteran quarterback.

He received one call--from Gibbs.

“It was already established that Jay was the starter,” Williams said. “(Gibbs) wanted to know if I could handle being the backup quarterback. Hey, when you get no calls, you don’t have no choice except to handle it. But we’re in America. There’s no better country to live in.”

It isn’t so much anger that visits Williams on occasion, as it is cynicism. He can laugh sadly about his experiences, but with his teeth clenched. He forgives but never truly forgets.

“I think about (what might have been) all the time,” he said. “Just sitting right here, I think about it. I wonder about a lot of things. I think that if I would have had a full 10 years’ worth of playing time, in a good organization, I think I could have ranked up there with the best of them.”

Williams said that’s he’s not crazy about the reasons for his imminent start, but then again, he wasn’t crazy about being ignored after his stay in the USFL. Nor was he wild about his treatment in Tampa. And although no one expected Schroeder to trip and fall over his own success, it happened. Waiting was Williams.

“I never had a doubt in my mind that I couldn’t start in this league,” Williams said. “I don’t think you need a Phi Beta Kappa to see if you can play in the NFL.

“But it boils down to, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ ”

Last year, it was nothing. One game. One pass. One incompletion.

So Williams politely requested a trade. Anywhere would do, just as long as he had an opportunity to start.

Why not? The Redskins were paying Schroeder, their quarterback of the present and future, $1 million a year. Gibbs had a reputation of remaining loyal to his veteran starting players. Williams wasn’t getting any younger. A trade seemed reasonable.

According to Williams, shortly after the exhibition game against the Rams Sept. 5, Gibbs called.

“There’s a possibility something is about to happen,” Gibbs said.

Turns out, the Raiders were interested. Actually, they were more than interested. They were eager to deal.

As for money, Williams said he wasn’t greedy. They were paying Marc Wilson--what, $1 million?

“I feel I should be more in the $650,000-$700,000 range,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask for a mill. I would have played for less than a mill and been happy. Let me put it in country terms: I would have been as happy as a hog in slop.”

Williams said he was told that the Redskins had been offered a second-round draft pick. Initially, the Redskins agreed, “but then Coach Gibbs decided not to.

“I told him that it probably would be the last time I would have a chance to be a starter,” Williams said. “It was going to be a plus to be a Raider, that was my thinking. But I didn’t think Jay was going to get hurt in the first game (this season). I didn’t think he’d go through a slump.”

Williams found himself in the lineup when Schroeder injured his shoulder in the season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles.

The next week, against the Atlanta Falcons, Williams started and the Redskins lost. Then came the strike, Schroeder’s sprained shoulder healed, and Williams resumed his role as a $475,000-a-year backup.

But Schroeder, so impressive last year, was no better than average for much of 1987. There was that 15-for-38 game against the New York Jets, that 16-for-46 performance against the Eagles almost two weeks ago and then last Sunday’s game against Detroit, from which Schroeder was pulled after only 10 attempts and 33 yards of completions.

Now, Williams savors the moment. He is the starter, fair and square. Not since a 1982 playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys has Williams started a game on his own merit.

“As long as I produce, I think I’ll be the quarterback there,” he said. “I just hope the media doesn’t make it into a controversy, into a racial thing.

“You’re going to have some people saying that Doug shouldn’t be playing. Some people will say that I didn’t play because I’m black. And now some people will say it’s unfair to Jay.”

This much is sure: This weekend, the NFL will have three black starting quarterbacks--Williams, Philadelphia’s Randall Cunningham and Houston’s Warren Moon--for what is believed to be the first time in its often stodgy history. Williams can’t wait.

“It’s been a rocky road, a few thunderstorms along the way,” he said. “But I overcame them all. It hasn’t been that easy.”

Easy? Williams wouldn’t know what to do if something came easy. But now, after 10 seasons of assorted struggles, he’d like to find out.