1-Man Gang on Broncos’ Defense, Too

What’s a Karl Mecklenburg?

Wait a minute, don’t prompt me.

It’s--a gate in East Berlin? A Beethoven concerto? A small town in Iowa? The sound a plate glass window makes breaking?

If it’s a person, what is he? The conductor of the Chicago Symphony? Inventor of the dirigible? A Roman Catholic prelate? A Bavarian count? Is there a Baron in front of his name?

Well, Karl Mecklenburg plays football for the Denver Broncos--but even they are not too sure what he is. Neither is the rest of the league.

Let’s see, is he a defensive end? A linebacker?

The confusion does not stop there. No matter what he plays, where does he line up? The only thing for sure when the game starts is that Mecklenburg will be in it. Where is another matter.

Mecklenburg is so flexible, sometimes you expect him to line up with the other team. Or to have his startled teammates turn and say to him, “What are you doing here?”

Football has had its Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. Mecklenburg is its Mr. Everywhere.

Every quarterback in the league wishes he would stay put. They would like to lock him in the game plan once and for all. Come up to the line of scrimmage knowing where Karl Mecklenburg is going to be for the next few seconds so they can design a play around him.

Instead of that, Mecklenburg turns it into a Tom & Jerry cartoon, “Yoo Hoo! I’m over here!”

Mecklenburg’s stock-in-trade is confusion. He wants to get the opposing quarterback to audibilizing. In football, you are said to audibilize when you can see the play you drew in the huddle isn’t going to work. Usually, when you play the Broncos, that’s because Mecklenburg isn’t where he’s supposed to be. Where you hope he’ll be.

Audibles are not as reliable as plays called in the huddle. For one thing, 11 players have to detect the change in signals and the substitution. This gives you 11 opportunities to mess up. Mecklenburg likes to mess you up.

If this is hard on enemy quarterbacks, it’s hard on Mecklenburg’s teammates, too. “You have to remember when I move over, all the other guys have to move over, too--take another rush or zone,” he reminds.

It’s not that easy for him, either.

“The hardest thing to remember is what I am,” he notes. “If you’re playing defensive line, you take long steps. If you’re playing linebacker, you take short steps.”

The other thing opposing coaches have to figure out about Mecklenburg is how many there are of him. More than one coach has studied films and come away with the positive belief he comes in quadruplicate. The Broncos clone him before every game.

The image of the Denver Broncos in this Super Bowl XXII is that of a doughty little band of outweighed, outmanned opportunists--the professional equivalents of the “gutty little Bruins” of West Coast legend. They come into focus as dauntless little kids in coal-scuttle helmets and floppy socks, playing the big bullies from the other side of the tracks.

They have to play the kind of game where they run around saying, “Ha! Ha! You missed me!” while the Redskins reply, “Think so? Let me see you try to nod your head.”

Mecklenburg personifies this mental image of the little kid tiptoeing through the land of the giants, 11 Little Red Riding Hoods trying not to notice the wolf’s teeth.

A 230-pound inside linebacker is not an offense against football’s paramilitary psychology but a 230-pound defensive end is. Mecklenburg is both.

At 6 feet 3 inches, Mecklenburg is hardly your basic redwood-tree-with-cleats defensive end. He relies on quickness, not strength. When he goes up against 6-7, 315-pound Joe Jacoby, a lot of people will want to cover their eyes.

Not Mecklenburg. “A guy carrying that much weight has trouble changing direction,” he says, sunnily.

Mecklenburg has always had trouble getting football to take him seriously. He was such a smallish defensive end, the only school that would even let him on its field was little Augustana in South Dakota.

“I was a 6-foot 2-inch, 190-pounder who thought he was Deacon Jones,” he says. “They thought maybe they didn’t have any mirrors down where I came from.”

He transferred to Minnesota, where they didn’t want him either. “I was a walk-on,” he explains.

In football parlance, a walk-on is an uninvited, even unwelcome guy who doesn’t realize a football squad is as hand-picked as the college of cardinals. Most walk-ons become carried-offs by the first scrimmage. But, Mecklenburg began producing his own limp-offs and got clear up to second-team All-Big Ten before he left Minnesota.

The pros were still not impressed. Guys his size who thought they could stop the Chicago Bears were not people you send cars for. The Broncos drafted Mecklenburg in the 12th round, the last one, which is football’s way of telling you to find another line of work.

Mecklenburg didn’t even look like a defensive end. He was white, which was all right, end being an equal opportunity position, but calling Mecklenburg white is like calling water wet. Mecklenburg is so white, he’s transparent. He’s an X-ray in cleats. He makes Larry Bird look swarthy. If he put on a white helmet, he’d disappear.

Even his eyes are white-on-white. “When his eyes roll up in his head and he jumps into that line, you might as well throw that play out the window,” rival Coach Chuck Knox said of him.

It is said the Denver Broncos are a one-man team. And so they may be. But it may not be that one with the football, old what’s-his-name?

The Broncos’ one-man team may be a guy so invisible that when the quarterback says, “Did you see Mecklenburg on that play?” the Redskin lineman will be moved to answer, “Which one? There’s three of them, aren’t there? At least.”