It’s Clearer Why He’s Here : Bernstine Starting to Make Charger Choice Look Smart

His mother had decided to marry an old high school sweetheart. She had returned to the house to let him and his brother and two sisters know they would be moving from Northern California to Bryan, Tex., 80 miles west of Houston.

“Living in California was the fast lane,” says Rod Bernstine, the Charger H-back who caught four more passes Sunday than any other Charger has caught in a game this year. “Moving to Texas was like a culture shock. We had cars in California. I thought we were going to have to hitch up to a wagon train or something in Bryan.”

Bernstine was 13 at the time.

He would eventually develop a country accent, a taste for barbecue and the ability to look at a tumbleweed and see it not as a sign of desolation but as a symbol of wide open spaces.

Yet for a short, painful period, he wondered what on earth he was doing in Bryan, Tex. It was not the last time he would wonder why he had arrived at a particular place.

When the Chargers selected him in the first round of the 1987 draft, they already had future Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow, sure-handed Pete Holohan and dependable Eric Sievers at tight end. Coach Al Saunders wasn’t exactly sure what to tell the media after Steve Ortmayer, the team’s director of football operations, told him Bernstine would be the Chargers’ top choice that morning.

Ortmayer knew Saunders was miffed by the pick. And he tried to make it up to Saunders in the next round by giving in to Saunders’ request for a cornerback. The Chargers picked the wrong one. USC’s Lou Brock Jr. was too small and not especially hard-nosed. He is no longer with the team.

Sources inside the Charger organization say Ortmayer still regrets the Brock pick. But he has stood by the selection of Bernstine. The rest of the NFL is finally finding out why.

In the past three games, Bernstine has caught 14 passes for 223 yards, including 9 for 80 against the 49ers Sunday. In the first 10 games of 1988, he caught 14 for 106 yards. As a rookie, he caught 10 for 76 yards.

“He’s definitely on the improve,” says Jerry Rhome, the Chargers’ offensive coordinator. “And I hope that doesn’t put a jinx on him. He’s learning to do more, and he’s hanging onto the ball. And he’s gotten a little smarter in what he’s doing. That has helped.”

The H-back position in Rhome’s offense is an offshoot of the tight end spot Bernstine played in college. Like a good tight end, an H-back must be an accomplished blocker with size and sure hands. But an H-back must be able to line up in the backfield and at all three conventional (tight, split and flanker) receiver positions. Aside from quarterback, the H-back has more learning responsibilities than any other player in Rhome’s offense.

Bernstine played little last year, mostly because Winslow was having a Pro Bowl season. Then Rhome arrived in the offseason, and suddenly Bernstine was an H-back.

“To put it in a nutshell,” Bernstine says, “I’m pretty much like a rookie again.”

The hardest part is the blocking. Bernstine had converted from running back to tight end at Texas A&M.; And he had never mastered the blocking techniques at his new position. Now Rhome was asking him to attack linebackers, the best defensive athletes on most teams, in the open field. Bernstine’s progress was slow.

“I wasn’t manhandling them the way the coaches wanted me to,” he says. “That added to some of the frustrations.”

And his pass-catching suffered.

“If you miss a block, and then go out and catch a 20- or 30-yard pass, you feel a little better about it,” he says. “But if you’re not put in those pass-catching situations because you’ve missed a block, and it’s on the coaches’ minds, you have a problem.”

When Winslow retired this fall after a brief suspension, Bernstine simply wasn’t ready.

His roommate on the road, Jamie Holland, was struggling, too. Both were second-year receivers searching for identities on an offense that had lost its definition when Dan Fouts retired in the spring.

“There were times,” Holland says, “where Rod would sit in the room and say, ‘Damn, I wish I could catch some balls.’ Some games when he wouldn’t catch a pass, he would feel depressed.”

Holland could dig that. He caught a touchdown pass against the Raiders in the season opener and had to wait 4 weeks for his next reception. In the past five games, Bernstine and Holland are tied for first in receptions among Charger receivers with 18.

Eventually teams began daring the Chargers to throw away from their fast, young wide receivers--Holland and rookies Quinn Early and Anthony Miller. The safeties were dropping back a little more each week in coverage. The “underneath” areas were wide open. Miller and Early combined have caught just 15 passes the past 5 weeks.

Bernstine saw it coming. And he was determined to take advantage of it. Meanwhile, the Chargers switched to Mark Vlasic at quarterback in Week 11. Like Bernstine, Vlasic was a second-year player. He had no preconceived notions about dropped balls or bad routes. He would make his read and throw to the open man.

In Vlasic’s first start, the open man was Bernstine on second and 8 from his own 29. The Chargers were in Atlanta with a 3-0 lead in the middle of the final period. Bernstine caught the ball over the middle, bounced off a couple of tacklers, cut to the right sideline and didn’t stop until he had rambled 57 yards. Three plays later, Barry Redden’s 5-yard touchdown run gave the Chargers a 10-0 lead. They held on to win, 10-7, and break a 6-game losing streak.

A week later, the Chargers looked suspiciously as if they were about to blow a 14-point, fourth-quarter lead to the heavily favored Rams in Anaheim. The Rams had just streaked 68 yards on three plays midway through the final period and closed to 31-24.

Moments later, on third and 6 from the Charger 40, Mark Malone, subbing for injured Vlasic, spotted Bernstine underneath the Rams’ zone. Bernstine broke two tackles at the point of attack and didn’t stop until he had reached the Ram 1. The 59-yard gain was the longest Charger play from scrimmage all year--2 yards farther than the previous longest, Bernstine’s 57-yarder the week before.

One play later, Redden scored, and the Chargers won, 38-24.

Two things happened immediately:

- People such as Malone started talking about Bernstine. As in: “I think he’s the prototype H-back. He’s a smart kid. He’s got very good speed. He catches the ball extremely well, and he’s big and tough. He blocks well. And he can even run the ball.”

- And life got better. “It’s definitely easier to sleep now,” Bernstine says. “Neighbors are talking to me now. Around town and in the community, I’m getting spoken to a little bit more.”

Then he caught nine passes against the 49ers. And people started wanting to know everything about him.

Such as that last name--Bernstine, pronounced BURN-steen.

“It’s a Jewish name,” he says. “My great, great grandmother and great, great grandfather were Jewish.”

And his immediate goals: “Somebody asked me before the season started, and I gave them a roundabout figure of 40 catches. I set 40 and hoped it would be 50. I think that was a reasonable goal.”

Bernstine has caught 28 balls. There are three games remaining.

And what about his personality?

“He’s a hard-working guy,” Holland says. “But he’s a funny guy, a guy with a sense of humor. He’s just a funny old country boy.”

A funny old Texas country boy by way of Northern California who can talk to different people in different ways.

“I wasn’t much of a country boy when I moved to Texas,” he says. “But I had to change. I didn’t have a Texas accent. I was more like an intellectual.”

Bernstine wasn’t much of an NFL tight end/H-back when the Chargers got him last year. But he’s adjusting to that, too.

And after almost 2 years, he’s beginning to forget that he once wondered what he was doing here.