LIFE AFTER THE HEISMAN TROPHY : Others Passed on Brown, Raiders Passing to Him

What’s the Raider problem?

Not enough guys they have to bail out of the pokey the night before the big game?

Too few barbarians whose breath is enough to intimidate a quarterback?

A shortage of braggarts pounding their chests?

Let’s get real. Despite much of what is promulgated as analysis, the Raiders just ran short of actual players. Their coaches haven’t been sitting up nights asking, “Who are we going to get to set fire to the opposing team’s locker room in the third quarter?” but they would like to know if they have enough people who can make a football play.

And then along comes Tim Brown.

Meet your basic All-American, Heisman Trophy-winning boy next door.

Not only is he good, he’s almost too good to be true: Talented, hard-working, unselfish, gracious, low-key--and productive.

Was he unsigned when camp opened?

No problem. He signed a temporary 1-year deal . . . at half the pay his agent and owner Al Davis were already agreed on. Did the Raiders bring in Willie Gault?

No problem. Brown declared that there was another great player around he could learn from.

Brown is now starting ahead of Gault, ranks No. 1 in the league in kickoff returns and No. 6 in punt returns, while suggesting that he’s only going to get better.

“You haven’t seen the best of Tim Brown, I’ll promise you,” Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz said from South Bend, Ind.

“He’s special. He’s the type of guy, you’re around him just a few minutes and you can tell: He isn’t average. He isn’t an average athlete, he isn’t an average person.”

Do you think the Raiders mind having their swashbuckling image ruined by this Boy Scout? This is starting to look more and more like their Marcus Allen draft, when nine teams turned their noses up at a Heisman Trophy winner and Davis got to laugh about it for the rest of the decade.

Only five teams passed up Brown, but that was a lot, too.

No. 1 pick Aundray Bruce, the “impact” linebacker from Auburn, had 1 sack in the first half of the season for the Atlanta Falcons.

No. 2 pick Neil Smith of Nebraska and the Kansas City Chiefs tied Bruce.

No. 3 pick Bennie Blades of Miami is doing well, but a strong safety wasn’t going to turn the Detroit Lions’ defense around and he hasn’t.

No. 4 pick Paul Gruber, an offensive tackle from Wisconsin, is learning hard lessons for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

No. 5 pick Rickey Dixon of Oklahoma is a nickel back for the Cincinnati Bengals.

How did it come to that? This Heisman selection process is getting to be tough, and especially for a Notre Dame candidate--the word reads hype-- who only catches 39 passes.

The next thing you know, the pro scouts have picked up the cry and everyone is passing around Tampa Coach Ray Perkins’ line, that he prefers South Carolina wide receiver Sterling Sharpe because he’s more of a football player.

The next thing you know, Davis has another Heisman winner.

“I don’t think anybody understands the pressure that’s on you when you’re chasing the Heisman,” Holtz said.

“We didn’t have a quarterback. I mean, when we lost Terry Andrysiak in our third game, we had to go with Tony Rice, who’d been in our program for 5 weeks and didn’t know a ‘2’ coverage from a ‘3’ coverage and a man-to-man from a zone. Tim was double-covered, triple-covered, everything else.”

Tim was being covered by a lot more people than that. He had a big weekly press conference and did one-on-one interviews, too.

You think he misses it?

You think he doesn’t feel for Troy Aikman, Rodney Peete, et al?

“I really do,” Brown says. “I mean, seriously, I really do, because they’re going to go through things that are really unfortunate.

“I mean, you don’t ask to be a Heisman Trophy candidate. I mean, you’re just going out and playing football, and someone taps you and says, ‘You’re a Heisman Trophy candidate.’

“And from then on, you have to deal with all the criticism and the praise and everything that goes with it.

“And it gets worse as it goes on. It really does. I think the last couple of weeks are going to be terrible for them. They start looking at your family. Hey, it’s all a part of it and if you win the thing, it’s all worth it.”

Brown won the thing. He now has a $2.8-million, 4-year contract, so you could say it was worth it, all right.

But these are the rough, tough pros, and he really must be catching it now, right?

Wrong. This is like paradise.

“I tell you, this is much more relaxed,” Brown says. “In college, there was so much riding on it. I’m just here having a good time playing football, trying to make it work. I’m not really worried about rookie of the year, all that good stuff. If it happens, it happens. If not, hey, I’ve had my share of the limelight.”

So the next time you hear that the Raiders are going down because they’ve lost that old-time spirit, and none of them has driven his Jeep up the steps at City Hall and run off with the mayor’s wife, remember, it’s a new day.

We’re all having milk, barkeep.