VIKING STORYTELLER : Keith Millard’s Breathing Yarn Was Good One, While It Lasted

It was a great piece of fiction while it lasted--and touching, too.

Keith Millard, the hulking Pro Bowl defensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings, reportedly learned to control his legendary pregame outbursts by, of all things, accompanying his pregnant wife to Lamaze classes.

Something had to be done. The butterflies that fluttered in Millard’s stomach were the size of pterodactyls. His nerves could have stood on the edge of a razor. Millard had a habit of sending locker-room attendants weeping from the premises, what with all the bashing of dressing stalls and whatnot. There was a rage about him.

“I’d be in the locker room, talking and getting people fired up and firing myself up,” he said. “I’d be walking around, pacing the carpet, doing whatever. Then in pregame warmups, I’d be out there smacking guys around, doing anything I could to stay fired up. Hell, by the second quarter I was so burned out, I couldn’t get anything going. I’d get frustrated and tended to get a little overemotional on the sideline.”

Which is where fiction makes its appearance.

In the grand tradition of storytellers everywhere, Millard sort of created a tale. In it, he picked up all these neat breathing exercises while attending the Lamaze classes. Then he went on to tie for the team lead in sacks, make life miserable for offensive guards everywhere, earn a Pro Bowl appearance and live happily ever after.

The only problem with all of this is that it didn’t quite happen that way. Millard’s wife, Sallie, was pregnant (they had a boy). Millard does remember something about Lamaze classes. And he does actually use breathing as a way to steady himself before games.

“It keeps me calm,” he said. “I don’t like to get too hyper before I go out on the field because I waste a lot of energy. I like to take deep breaths and try to relax and just stay calm.”

But the key that unlocked his potential? The reason for his best season as a pro? Not really.

“Yeah, that’s kind of a joke,” he said.

Actually, Millard made life miserable for offensive linemen long before he started huffing and puffing. He was the 13th player chosen in the 1984 draft and, after spending a season in the United States Football League, Millard returned to the Vikings in time to eventually become their most treasured defensive lineman. Ask Viking coaches who inspires the league’s top-ranking defense and the vote is almost always unanimous: Millard.

“He’s played hard every down,” Coach Jerry Burns said. “As hard as any player I’ve been associated with.”

And this from defensive coordinator Floyd Peters, who, at times, would have liked to have tossed Millard from the top of the Metrodome tent:

“He’s really turning into a team leader. I used to think he was mad at the whole world, that he was a little selfish. He was kind of a rebel-without-a-cause guy. Now he often says that I gave him some good advice: ‘Not too high, not too low.’ He used to get so hyper. He’d hit lockers, react in a blind rage. He can function better now. Before, he used to have all those blowups.”

It seems that Millard couldn’t understand how someone could actually block him. The Great Keith--stopped? Couldn’t be.

So with each block, each missed tackle, each almost sack, Millard would get more and more upset at himself. Then he’d get mad at the guy blocking him. And at the guy’s teammates. If that didn’t work, Millard would get mad at his own teammates and, occasionly, his own coaches. More than once, Peters and Millard have engaged in shouting matches.

The old Millard brooded. The new Millard apologizes at a team meeting. The old Millard used to test anyone or anything: referees, management, his luck. The new Millard picks his moments.

For instance, when the Vikings backed into the playoffs last season, Millard criticized his teammates for what he perceived as a lack of effort and toughness. So, of course, the Vikings went on to beat the New Orleans Saints in the wild-card game, the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional playoffs and came one play from sending the NFC championship game against the Washington Redskins into overtime.

“I just didn’t feel real good about the team at that point,” Millard said. “But yet, we got in, and you’ve got to go from there.”

This season, the Vikings have been no less puzzling. One day, they look like the team to beat. The next day, they look like a team everyone can beat. Just check with the Green Bay Packers, who disposed of the Vikings twice this season.

But this time, Millard chooses his words carefully. He is disappointed, yes, with what he calls a roller coaster team. But he said he also understands that not everyone can be he, the human adrenal gland.

“It’s tough to stay excited for 16 weeks after training camp and everything else,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure in pro football. Week in and week out, it’s tough to stay up. Not for me, but as a team, as a whole, it is. Sometimes you can decide to skate through a game and people knock you off.”

Millard is a big fan of motivation. He used his season with the USFL’s Jacksonville Bulls to show the Vikings that he was worth more money come contract time. (He was.) He used a position switch--from defensive end to tackle--to show that he could play just about anywhere on the line, and play well. (He did.) He used the strike year and a calf injury to inspire him for this season. (It worked.)

Ram Pro Bowl guard Tom Newberry has faced Millard once before. It was, by all accounts, a push.

“He’s an emotional player and I really look forward to that aspect of the game, because I play emotionally,” Newberry said. “He’s real quick off the ball and he doesn’t stop playing until the whistle blows.”

So fast does Millard move at the snap that it often looks as if he’s offside. But here’s the trick: He moves laterally first and then up the field. It’s an uncanny sense that he has, but it works.

“All the great defensive linemen I’ve coached, or played with, or known, have a higher muscle twitch than normal people,” Peters said. “You follow me? The great pass rushers have got to have those great, high-, nervous-twitch muscles. Millard has it. Bob Lilly had it. All the great ones have it.”

Millard probably wouldn’t know a high-twitch muscle from the highway patrol, but he does know what makes his emotions bounce off locker-room walls.

“Basically, I just go through the motions during the week,” Millard said. “I try to work through practice, get my timing down and do what I’ve got to do. I don’t go crazy out in practice, that’s for sure.

“The thing is, I love the game of football. It doesn’t take much to get me going on Sunday. Basically, all you have to do is put another team out there.”

If Millard can wait an extra day, the Rams will be there Monday.