Chargers Acquire Malone

The Chargers will announce today they have traded for Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Mark Malone. Malone and officials from both teams talked freely about the deal Monday.

The cost to the Chargers: Two reported eighth-round draft picks. One in 1988. One in 1989. The 1989 pick is conditional.

“You get what you get,” Steeler president Dan Rooney said. “It’s fair.”

“For the price, we couldn’t hardly turn him down,” Jerry Rhome, the Chargers’ offensive coordinator, said.

Rhome knows all about that. As quarterbacks coach of the Redskins, he tutored Doug Williams the last two years. Like Malone, Williams was once a quarterback nobody else really wanted. All Williams did was end up the MVP of Super Bowl XXII.

“I’ve seen quarterbacks get a new lease on life,” Rhome said. “Sometimes all it takes is a change of scenery. This might not work out. But we’d have been foolish not to try it.”

Malone, 29, confirmed Monday the Chargers have re-negotiated his contract which called for one more year at a base salary of $500,000. Neither Malone nor the Chargers would comment on the length or monetary value of the new contract.

“It’s a great opportunity for me,” Malone said. “I hope it’s a good situation for the Chargers.”

Obviously the Chargers hope the same. But they aren’t banking on it yet.

“The fact that we would obtain a quarterback now does not preclude us from keeping the door open for anything that might eventuate,” said Steve Ortmayer, the team’s director of football operations.

That means the Chargers will continue to look for a deal involving quarterbacks. But for the time being they have acquired a quarterback who has started regularly and, in 1984, helped lead a team to the AFC championship game.

That’s more than the three currently rostered Charger quarterbacks--Mark Herrmann, Mark Vlasic and Mike Kelley--can say. Nevertheless, Malone promised he won’t take the competition lightly.

“I think you’d have to be kidding yourself to think you’re going to walk in and get handed the job,” he said. “Good competition makes you a better football player.”

Said Rhome, “It will be an open competition.”

The competition helped Malone in 1984 when the Steelers brought in David Woodley to replace Malone, who had thrown only 20 passes in 1983 after missing all of 1982 with a knee injury. After an early-season injury to Woodley, Malone responded with the best year of his career--16 touchdown passes and a 54% completion rate.

But this is also the same Mark Malone who finished the 1987 season as the NFL’s lowest-rated passer. In his last seven games he threw one touchdown pass and 11 interceptions.

This is the same Mark Malone who was booed during the warmups before the Steelers’ final 1987 game, a 19-13 loss at home to Cleveland.

“It’s terrible what he has had to endure,” Steeler Coach Chuck Noll said at the time. “But that’s the way our society has become. We teach our children it’s OK to abuse people. What a shame.”

This is the same Mark Malone who has started two games at wide receiver during a pock-marked, eight-year NFL career in which he once caught a 90-yard touchdown pass from Terry Bradshaw.

Actually this is not the same Mark Malone.

The knee injury that caused him to miss the entire 1982 season instantly ended his star-crossed future as an ad hoc wide receiver. He is 6-feet 4-inches, 220 now. And, says Rhome, “he can run.” But he is not as fast as he once was.

More important to Malone: He no longer has to play in Pittsburgh.

The Chargers are counting on the change of scenery to help Malone forget the abuse that peaked last year when a local radio disc jockey invited fans to a downtown Pittsburgh public square where they threw footballs through a tire as part of an open audition to find a replacement for Mark Malone.

In early December an irate Steeler fan named Tony Morelli drove his truck through a Three Rivers Stadium gate and up a ramp until he crashed into a huge vat of nacho cheese. Morelli then got out of his vehicle, wandered down to the field and began kicking imaginary field goals. Asked what he was doing by startled security personnel, Morelli said he was upset about Mark Malone.

Newsweek’s Pete Axthelm compared Malone to Magic Johnson and Bob Cousy as one of the greatest “bounce-passers” of all time.

Steeler fans displayed banners that said things such as: “Morelli’s Maniacs.” “Stay Home Malone,” and “Go Home Malone.”

Maybe “change of venue” is a better way to put what just happened to Malone.

Pittsburgh fans are notorious for being hard on their quarterbacks. It started with Jim Finks, now the Saints general manager, in the early ‘50s. Bobby Layne, a Hall of Famer, experienced the same thing as did Bradshaw, who won four Super Bowls in four tries.

But, said Pittsburgh broadcaster Myron Cope last year, “This is the worst treatment I can ever remember being given a quarterback in Pittsburgh. It’s almost like he committed a crime or something.”

Added center Mike Webster at the time: “There’s no reason to subject Mark or anyone else to the kind of abuse he’s had to take. Criticism is one thing. But what’s happened to Mark is out-and-out slander. It’s just a case of people trying to assassinate the guy.”

The guy that caused the oil spill that befouled Pittsburgh’s waterways last winter is more popular there than Mark Malone. But the guy that leads the Chargers back to the playoffs where they haven’t appeared since 1982 could quickly become more popular than the retired Dan Fouts.

Malone is hoping he’s that guy.

“I’m not claiming that I’ll come in and do the things that Dan did with the passing game,” Malone said. “But I don’t know that that’s going to be San Diego’s style in the future. I don’t think the Chargers are going to be a drop back, throw-the-ball-50-or-60-times-a-game team. They’re talking about a brand new approach. But it’s going to take a while to get all the pieces together.”

Malone was a prep All-American quarterback at El Cajon Valley High School before going to Arizona State. He was the MVP in the Senior Bowl before the Steelers made him a first-round draft pick in 1980. His mother and many other friends and relatives still live in the San Diego area.

“The fans in San Diego know he’s from there and they’ll give him a chance,” Rooney said. “I think that will help his whole outlook. I just hope it works for him. He’s a fine guy.”

Malone insisted it won’t matter. “I don’t play the game for the people in the stands,” he said. “I play it for myself because I like it and happen to be good at it. I’m more concerned with what I’m supposed to do on the field.

“I watched what happened to Bradshaw and Cliff Stoudt in Pittsburgh. They ran Stoudt out of town in one year. I can’t control those people. If you let them control you, they’ll drive you crazy.”