THE DIRTBAGS : When the Chargers Ran Wild in ‘88, Look Who Was Leading the Way

Lost in the messy late-season business of the Al Saunders’ firing last December was the dramatic improvement of the Chargers’ running game in the dying weeks of a deadly dull 6-10 season.

Highlight film makers caught the flash of running back Gary Anderson waterbugging for 387 yards in the last two games, both victories.

But precious few among even the most seasoned statistical sentinels noticed the Chargers’ leap from 19th to 12th in NFL rushing between Week 14 and the end of the regular season. Only one team, Pittsburgh, rushed for more yards than the Chargers in the final two weekends.

And almost nobody bothered to explore the one-word explanation for the turnaround: Dirtbags.

Dirtbags ?

Dirtbags.

Definition, please.

“Dirtbags; noun,” said Charger guard Broderick (Funk & Wagnalls) Thompson. “A person who cares only for his own; will protect; will fight only for his own.”

The Dirtbags came into being innocently enough at a 1988 mid-season meeting attended by the five starting offensive lineman--left tackle Ken Dalliafor, a former free agent; left guard Thompson, a former free agent; center Dan Rosado, a former free agent; right guard Dennis McKnight, a former free agent and right tackle David Richards, a rookie.

Offensive coordinator Jerry Rhome, now an assistant with the Cowboys, walked into the room with an idea and a speech.

Here’s Richards’ version of what Rhome said:

“Nobody thinks you guys are worth anything. But I know better. You guys are a bunch of dirtbags. You’re dirty. You’re nasty. You’re fighters. And you’re tough.”

“And we were,” Richards said. “When everybody thinks you stink, it takes all the pressure off. There was no reason for us to perform the way we did those last games. But we rose above the negative publicity and went a step beyond.”

Richards wound up on the UPI all-rookie team. McKnight’s peers around the league voted him an alternate to the Pro Bowl.

But unlike Washington’s porcine “Hogs,” nobody chronicled the Charger line. Nobody printed up T-shirts. Anderson never even got around to buying them gifts, the way Walter Payton always used to do for his linemen at the end of every season in Chicago.

“We really didn’t have to advertise it,” McKnight said. “We just knew in our own little hearts who we were. There wasn’t a whole lot of fanfare outside of our own little circle.”

And, alas, the Dirtbags are already a fading memory. When Charger owner Alex Spanos fired Saunders and hired Dan Henning to replace him as head coach, Rhome saw the handwriting on the wall and departed for Dallas. Offensive line coach Jerry Wampfler now works in Detroit, where he coaches Dalliafor, whom the Chargers lost in the Plan B free agency phase.

And new Charger line coach Larry Beightol already has instituted massive position changes. Richards is a guard. McKnight is fighting for a starting spot at center. Rosado finds himself trying to beat out fellow Dirtbag Thompson at left guard.

Henning was an offensive coach in Washington, where the Hogs’ trademark was size. During the off-season he asked Steve Ortmayer, the Chargers director of football operations, to find him the biggest offensive linemen available.

Right now five Charger offensive linemen weigh 300 pounds or more. At the end of 1988, only Richards weighed that much. Dalliafor was positively petite at 275. But his teammates called him “Diesel” because of the way he chugged around the field. They also called him “Boomerang.” No matter how many times teams cut him, he always came back.

“Kenny would go from the snap to the end of the whistle and maybe just beyond the whistle on every play,” Rosado said. “And if someone was standing around, whether it was legitimate or not, Kenny would hit him. That’s kind of the way football is supposed to be played. You better not be standing around the pile with Kenny around. And that stuff’s contagious.”

Dalliafor, Thompson said, was definitely the dirtiest of the Dirtbags. “He would do anything possible to make a block,” Thompson said.

Dirtbags don’t write post cards. But if they did, here’s what Thompson’s would say to Dalliafor: “Dear Ken, wish you were here but hope you are having success in Detroit. Hope you carry on and remember the Dirtbags. God bless, take it easy.”

The Dirtbags will not wallow in the past. “It was a special group of guys and a special time,” McKnight said. “But we’re a thing of the past. It’s time to move on to other things.”

That doesn’t mean Dirtbag alumni can’t squabble over whose view of history is more or less revisionist than another’s. Or whose gaze into the future is more correct.

“Each line has to develop a new identity,” McKnight was saying recently.

“Until we get settled in,” piped up Richards, who was standing nearby.

“He is interviewing me,” McKnight snarled at Richards, “not you.”

This was vintage Dirtbag. Offensive linemen are among the least publicized among NFL players. And in this case, hell would see no fury like a Dirtbag interrupted.

But for one fleeting period of their lives, the Dirtbags were a unit, a concert, a living breathing illustration of how the O’s are supposed to destroy the X’s, just like they draw it up on the blackboard.

“There nothing more exciting than to pull around on a counter gap and come walking through a big hole that you could drive a truck through,” Richards said. “The guard’s kicked out on the end and you run up in there in the hole and you hit somebody and roll around on the ground and there goes Gary Anderson just cruising down the field. And you say, ‘ Yeah , we got him through.’ ”

It’s too early to tell. But right now Richards is the only Dirtbag with reasonable assurance he will be starting again in 1989. But whoever Henning and Beightol decide upon when the regular season begins against the Raiders Sept. 10, it won’t be the same as last year.

“The line,” Beightol says, “is going to look a lot different this year.”

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Dirt to bag.

“But to be a Dirtbag was a good thing,” Thompson said. “It was a private club. It was exclusive. You had to have membership to get in. And it was an elite club as far as we were concerned.”

Comedian/actor Robin Williams would have loved the Dirtbags. Sort of like The Dead Poet’s Society. But Williams is famous and the Dirtbags are not. He would not have been welcome in their circle.

SCRIMMAGE LOST

Cowboys beat Chargers, 14-3, in a scrimmage. Page 13A.