Chargers May Really Be Stealers in This Trade

Give the Chargers credit. The Mark Malone trade can’t miss.

If the quarterback they got last month from the Pittsburgh Steelers fails miserably, the deal that sent two middle-round draft choices to Pittsburgh is still defensible. The price was right.

If Malone starts for the Chargers, stays healthy and wins more than, say, two games, the right-thinking critics who maintain that the Chargers have the most untested talent in the league will stand on their heads and applaud with their feet.

If Malone even approaches the success of recent quarterback reclamation projects such as Raider Jim Plunkett and Redskin Doug Williams, the fingers will point east at a Steeler front office that just confounded the rest of the league with yet another incomprehensible draft.

The Chargers still could trade for San Francisco’s Joe Montana or Washington’s Jay Schroeder. That would make Malone a backup and render moot any further discussion on the merits of the Chargers’ decision to bring Malone back to the area in which he grew up.

But with each passing day, it becomes more likely that Malone will take the first snap from center Sept. 4, when the Chargers open the 1988 regular season against the Raiders in the Coliseum.

Jim Mann has mixed emotions about that.

Mann is the athletic director at El Capitan High School. In the mid-1970s, he was the football coach at El Cajon Valley. Malone was his quarterback. And, Mann says, “he was the hardest-working athlete I have ever had. Bar none. He was also the best-skilled athlete.”

High school coaches are supposed to say those kinds of things about athletes who go on to become college All-Americans and No. 1 draft choices in the NFL. But that doesn’t make them any less true.

Two years ago, Chicago Bear quarterback Jim McMahon scoffed at criticism from his coaches and teammates who said he didn’t study enough film. Malone took film home every night while still in high school.

After Friday night games, the El Cajon coaching staff would meet on Saturday mornings to break down film and assign grades from the night before. They would finish in time for lunch. That’s when Malone would show up to find out how he did and get a head start on the next week’s game plan.

“Mark’s whole world was athletics,” Mann says. That world also included basketball and track and field when they were in season. He was a sprinter and a triple jumper and threw the discus and the shot.

His parents had divorced before he reached high school. So his mother had to work to make sure her son didn’t. Malone’s father was involved in auto racing. That enabled Mark to be a member of the pit crew when the two were together during the summer.

But during the school year, Malone spent much of his time with Mann. They grew close. And Mann suffered like a father when he heard the stories about how the Steeler fans in Pittsburgh booed Malone unmercifully.

Like the Chargers, Mann is more cautious than optimistic about Malone’s immediate professional future. “I don’t know whether he’s the answer to the Chargers’ problems long-term or not,” Mann said. “Mark’s been playing quite a few years now. He may only have three or four years left. He was a special kid. But he’s not a kid anymore.”

Still, Malone is not yet 30.

But Mann has his own memories of the quarterback who was like a son. And nobody can take those away from him.

There was the time during Malone’s junior year when the team was having what Mann described as “girl problems.”

“I told the players I didn’t want to see their girlfriends around the football field,” Mann said.

Malone’s girlfriend at the time was a cheerleader. In the first game after Mann’s edict, Malone broke loose for a long touchdown run. Before he returned to the sideline, he stopped and hugged her in the end zone. Right there in front of Mann and the rest of the world.

The next week, Malone was benched.

His mother was furious at Mann. But Malone never uttered a word of protest.

That same season, Malone kept the ball and ran 96 yards for a touchdown on a triple option with less than 30 seconds remaining to beat Santana, 14-13. “Broke two tackles and ran like a deer,” Mann said. “But I had to give him a minus grade on the play. He made the wrong read.”

In Pittsburgh, Malone, a first-round pick in 1980, called his own plays. He won’t have to do that with the Chargers. “Maybe he was drafted by the wrong team at the wrong time,” Mann said. “Calling plays is an added pressure.”

Now there is no pressure on Malone. There is no pressure on the Chargers in regard to Malone because they haven’t tried to sell them to the public as a savior.

They have made a trade that is foolproof. Unless, of course, Malone makes fools of the critics and leads the Chargers into the playoffs.

If that happens, look for Jim Mann at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. He’ll be the guy hugging Mark Malone in the end zone.