Trying to Figure Out Manley Certainly Isn’t an Easy Task

Dexter Manley’s support system is more than two-tiered; it’s coaches, players, attorneys, doctors, gurus, commissioners and referees all watching over him. Manley’s explanation is, “I need a lot of hooks in me,” and the best part is, he’s not trying to wriggle free.

Opening night this year in New Jersey was a bad start, as Manley took on all comers, including a sideline water table. The table won, the Giants won and Manley, the Washington Redskins’ he-man defensive end, lost. Stapled to the bench that night, he went sackless and held an incredible feeling of failure, a hollow ache he has known before and loathes. He had vowed to be dominating that Monday night on national TV, it being his first game since Commissioner Pete Rozelle banished him 30 days for substance abuse.

“That’s the only reason I play football, because it’s on TV,” Manley was saying Friday. “If there were no football on TV, I’d retire. If it were on radio, I wouldn’t play. Shoot . . . no one would see me.”

Everyone would’ve seen his first sack that Monday night, except Giants tackle William Roberts grabbed him from behind to prevent it. Manley pummeled Roberts into the ground. Manley said he had seemingly lost all sanity, for that hollow ache had returned--no sack. And when trying to explain his actions Friday, Manley several times brought up boxer Mike Tyson, as if their unabridged anger is one in the same.

Manley heard several lectures in the days to follow that game--from his calming attorney Bob Woolf, from his sometime-adversary coach, Joe Gibbs, from his quiet, yet stern position coach, Torgy Torgeson, from his somewhat sympathetic “spiritual” guru, Pham Chopra. Manley has said he woke up a new man that next week, and the new Manley finally did wiggle free in the second Giants game last Sunday, recording his first four sacks of the season in a span of seven New York plays from scrimmage.

There are those here at Redskin Park who feel a good Dexter Manley is a Dexter Manley whose agenda is full all day, with little time to kill.

“I used to go out and party,” Manley said. “And, at times, it would affect me like a roller coaster. . . . I knew I had the tools, but a lot of things were distracting me. Not that my priorities were in the wrong order, but I want to have a good time. I like the excitement . . . I still can have excitement, but I’ve got to control it.”

In the off-season, Manley ended up violating the league’s subsance abuse policy. He said he always has needed someone guiding him, and he said he first began losing his direction when his father, Carl, died during his freshman year at Oklahoma State University. “I had to make all decisions for myself, and I was 17, 18,” he said.

He said Pham Chopra, a native of India, a former alcoholic himself, is the closest thing to a father figure now. “I get good advice,” he said. They talk every day, either at his house or at Chopra’s house, and Manley speaks of illuminating candle ceremonies that soothe him.

The mundane routine at Redskin Park helps, too. It’s Dallas Week, for instance, and there have been no loud proclamations from Manley. Last year, he told Mikhail Gorbachev to get out of town, for the Soviet leader’s visit to Washington was detracting from Dallas Week. Yet, somehow, the Redskins have reined him in this year, as Manley has toned down that eye-popping act.

For as long as he can remember, for instance, he’s always paced the sidelines before a game, particularly during the national anthem. But Manley said he now sits still during the anthem, it being “disrespectful” not to.

Manley gets an ear-full from coaches every day as well, and he said their most common refrain remains, “Don’t think, Dexter. . . . Just get to your meeting.”

Explaining Manley in 25 words or less is bordering on impossible, for he hasn’t figured it all out himself. In a 45-minute interview Friday--indoors--he took his Rayban sunglasses on and off some 20 times. Here is someone who curses on radio and TV, yet also wears the phrase, “Just Say No” on the back of his practice jersey. For the record, he doesn’t mean to say those bad words on the air, but, he said, they just slip out. So, it’s better not to do live interviews with Manley; a two-second delay is safer.

Few are as candid, though. After kicker Chip Lohmiller flubbed up a chance to win last Sunday’s Giants game, Manley said the kid better get with it, and he’d said the same when Max Zendejas kicked wobblers in 1986. “You call a spade, a spade,” Manley explained. “I can’t call a spade a club. But I will always respect my teammates. It’s what you call ‘tough love.’ That’s the way my father was with me.”

One day growing up, Manley said he burned someone else’s house down. Carl Manley whipped him and made him sleep in the closet. “The worst butt-whupping I ever had,” said Manley, with apologies to offensive tackles everywhere. “I was always afraid to go to jail. Because if I had, I’d have taken a beating at home. . . . After that fire, kids all started calling me ‘firebug.’ And whenever I’d hear a fire truck coming, I’d take off running. I’d be scared to death.”

Yet, on the field, it’s not fear that drives him, it’s anger. New York’s Lawrence Taylor walked off the street after a drug suspension last week and got two first-half sacks. “That burned me up,” said Manley, who had had zero sacks at the time. “I figured, ‘Hey, I got the tools, too. What’s wrong? If he’s going to do it, I’ll do it, too.’ ”

Anger is one of his favorite football topics, anyway. “I have to play angry,” he said. For instance, he bristles when a lineman stops him or cheats and holds him.

“That’s why it’s hard for me to walk away when someone takes a cheap shot at me,” he said. “Why? Growing up, I was fighting my way out of a lot of things. It’s human nature.”

He derives anger from his pre-season suspension as well. “I’m not angry because I was suspended,” he said, “but because of the fact that I was, I had no choice but to be angry and take it out on people. See, I can take my frustrations out on the football field, while other people can’t go out and take their frustration out on a civilian. That’s the thing Mike Tyson and I (have in common). He can take his frustration out in the ring, although lately he’s been taking them out in other places. . . . But I think it makes him a better boxer and me a better player.”

At home, he is a pleasant papa, the responsible parent of two--4-year-old Dexter Jr. and Dalis, a 3-year-old girl. Dalis was born with leg problems and has hardly known life without a foam rubber cast. Manley said he’s the opposite of his father when it comes to his kids. No tough love--just love.

Dalis, coincidentally, was named for the Dallas Cowboys. On the night the Redskins opened their 1985 season in Texas Stadium, his wife, Glinda, phoned Dexter in the locker room to say she was pregnant. “I knew right then Dallas would be the right night, though we spelled it differently,” he said. “But if I’d been in Green Bay, I don’t know if we’d have named her Green Bay Packer.”

Some might be surprised to know that Manley cries at sad movies. As fierce as he is on the field, he is a pussycat off, a toothy smile usually greeting all visitors. But then he’ll offer the obligatory handshake and squeeze as tight as he can. Friends say if he squeezes extra tight, he likes you.

Not that he needs self-gratification, but he does need a crowd around him, either at RFK Stadium or at home or at work. “Our RFK crowd gets rocking n’ rolling,” he said. “If you’re not ready to play after that, you ought to see one of the doctors I’m seeing. . . . If I had tried to play college ball at Columbia or someplace with no fans, I wouldn’t have shown up for the games.”

Manley hears every catcall, too; he’s got rabbit ears. Opening night at Giants Stadium, he said he heard some of them shout, “Hey Dexter! Just say no!”

“I’m pretty mcuh mature now,” he said Friday. “I know right from wrong. But, I must admit, before it used to be, ‘I’ll do it my way, to hell with the consequences.’ Now, I’ll do it somebody else’s way. My way failed. I got suspended.”